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A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her image was displayed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

But then her online profiles exploded with activity and people started tagging her on Instagram.

"Initially it was a few scattered messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she explained. "Then they sent me the video where my face was shown on a big screen. I thought it was artificial intelligence or some prank. But then many people started contacting at the same time and I realised it was actually happening."

Nery, who resides in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has not once been to India, says she looked on Google to comprehend what was going on.

The Events That Had Happened

What had taken place was the fallout of a press conference by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party BJP and the Election Commission (EC) of committing voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has denied the allegations.

Hours after the media event, the election authority of Haryana shared a letter they claimed they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an oath with the names of unqualified voters "in order that necessary proceedings could be initiated". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of accusations of "vote theft" against the election authority since early August.

In his latest claims, he said his team had examined the Election Commission's voter list data and found that of the approximately 20 million voters, 2.5 million were irregular entries - including duplicates, multiple registrations and invalid addresses. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported tampering of the voters' list.

To prove his claims, he showed a series of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi positioned in front of a big image of Nery, while another showed a compilation of 22 voters with various names and addresses but all with her photos.

"Who is this lady? What age is she? She casts ballots 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He explained that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across multiple voter entries under different names. He referred to Nery as a model who had been listed on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.

The Reality Behind the Photo

The 29-year-old verified that it was certainly her in the photograph. "Absolutely. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the individual in the images."

She clarified that she was a stylist and not a model and that the photo was taken in March 2017 when she was 21, just outside her home. The photographer, she said, "thought I was pretty and asked to take photos of me".

Now years later, all the focus in the past two days from "people from India, many of them journalists", has left her frightened.

"I felt fear. I cannot determine if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is correct or incorrect because I do not know the groups involved," she expressed.

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many journalists were contacting me. They found the number of the place where I work.

"I had to remove the salon name from my profile because they were bothering my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the sudden attention. Until recently, he says India meant only Caminho das Índias - the 2009 Brazilian television series - to him.

He's still trying to understand the events of the last few days in a country thousands of miles away.

Some people had contacted to him from India a week back, asking him who the woman in the photo was, he explained.

"I didn't respond. I'm not going to provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he explained. "I believed it was a fraud. I blocked and reported it."

But since Gandhi's press conference, "the situation have escalated dramatically".

"Individuals were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. It was terrible. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. Later I googled and understood what was occurring, but at first I had no idea."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "People were making memes, like transforming it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out as a photographer when he invited Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photo session. Ferrero said he posted the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo became viral… reached around 57 million impressions," he stated.

He has now removed the link from his Unsplash account but he shared screenshots taken earlier that showed other photos of Nery from the same shoot.

"I removed them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got scared imagining this occurring to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The website was open and I uploaded like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first response is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Transformative Events

Not one of Ferrero or Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that occurred at the far side of the world could dramatically change their lives.

When asked if all this contributed to uncover electoral fraud, would that be beneficial?

"Yes, I think that would be good. But I don't truly know the specifics," he responded.

Nery who has never left the country says: "This situation is distant from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."