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A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her image was splashed over the news in an claim about alleged election fraud, has explained that she initially thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

But then her social media blew up and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

"At first it was a few random messages. I thought they were confusing me for someone else," she said. "Then they sent me the video where my face was shown on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then lots of people started contacting at the same time and I understood it was actually happening."

Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, the main urban center of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she searched on Google to understand what was happening.

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 alleged Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party BJP and the Election Commission (EC) of engaging in 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 said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an oath with the names of unqualified voters "in order that necessary actions could be initiated". They did not reply to the specific allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of accusations of "electoral fraud" against the poll panel 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 repeated entries, bulk voters and incorrect locations. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged tampering of the voters' list.

To demonstrate his claims, he showed a number 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 different names and addresses but all with her photos.

"Who is this woman? What age is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He clarified that a solitary 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 Truth Behind the Image

The 29-year-old verified that it was indeed her in the photograph. "Yes. 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 "individuals from India, many of them reporters", 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 right or wrong because I do not know the parties involved," she expressed.

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

"I needed to delete the salon name from my profile because they were disturbing my workplace. My boss even spoke to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed by the unexpected attention. Until not long ago, 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 give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he said. "I believed it was a scam. I blocked and reported it."

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

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

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "Individuals were making memes, like turning 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 shared the photos on his Facebook and also uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo blew up… reached around 57 million views," he stated.

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

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

"When you see people entering your Twitter, Facebook, personal Instagram, you become alarmed. The first response is to shut everything down and figure things out later. Some people thought it was amusing, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Transformative Events

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

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

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

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