🔗 Share this article

A Brazilian hairdresser named Larissa Nery, who has been gaining attention in India this week after her photograph was displayed over the news in an allegation about reported election fraud, has explained that she initially thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.

But then her social media exploded with activity and people started tagging her on Instagram.

"Initially it was a few random messages. I thought they were mistaking 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 joke. But then many people started contacting at the same time and I understood it was real."

Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has not once been to India, says she searched on Google to understand what was happening.

What Transpired

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 committing voter fraud in last year's election in Haryana state. The BJP has denied the allegations.

Some time after the media event, the Chief Electoral Officer 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 comment on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a number of claims of "electoral fraud" against the election authority since early August.

In his most recent claims, he said his team had looked through the Election Commission's voter list data and found that of the approximately 20 million voters, 2.5 million were problematic registrations - including repeated entries, multiple registrations and invalid addresses. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged tampering of the voters' list.

To prove his claims, he showed a series of slides on a big screen. One of them showed Gandhi standing 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 casts ballots 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He explained that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous 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 Photo

The 29-year-old confirmed that it was indeed 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 hairdresser 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, "found me attractive and asked to photograph 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 risky for me or if speaking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is right or incorrect because I do not know the parties involved," she expressed.

"I couldn't go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many reporters were calling me. They located 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 treat it like a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Photographer's Perspective

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

He's still trying to understand the events of the last few days in a country a great distance 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 reply. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't been in contact with this friend in years," he said. "I thought it was a scam. I ignored and reported it."

But since Gandhi's media appearance, "things have exploded".

"Individuals were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I disabled my Instagram to try to understand what was going on. Later I googled and understood what was occurring, but at first I had no clue."

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. "Individuals were creating jokes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's absurd."

In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out as a photographer when he asked 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… achieved around 57 million views," he stated.

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

"I deleted them out of concern, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something incorrect?' But I didn't. The website was accessible and I posted like millions of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos restricted.

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

Transformative Events

Not one of Ferrero nor 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 questioned if all this contributed to uncover electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

Nery who has not once left the country states: "This situation is far from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in another country."