The Way a Brazilian Lady Turned Into the Public Image of India Vote Fraud Controversy

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

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

"At first it was a few scattered 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 many people started messaging at the same time and I understood it was real."

Nery, who resides in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she looked on Google to understand what was happening.

The Events That Transpired

What had occurred was the consequence 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 press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to endorse an declaration with the names of unqualified voters "so that necessary proceedings could be started". They did not reply to the specific allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

Gandhi has made a series of claims of "vote theft" 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 problematic registrations - including duplicates, multiple registrations 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 standing in front of a big image of Nery, while another showed a collection of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her images.

"What person is this woman? How old is she? She casts ballots 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi stated.

He clarified that a solitary stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used repeatedly across numerous voter entries under various names. He described 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. "Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the individual in the images."

She explained 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 take photos of me".

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

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is dangerous for me or if talking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or incorrect because I do not know the groups involved," she expressed.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see 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 consider it a meme, but it is impacting me in my career."

The Camera Artist's Perspective

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also swamped 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 make sense of 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 stated.

"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 said. "I believed it was a scam. I ignored and flagged it."

But since Gandhi's press conference, "the situation 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 searched online and realised what was happening, but at first I had no clue."

Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were making memes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

In 2017, Ferrero was just beginning his career 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 uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

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

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 shoot.

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being misused. I got frightened imagining this happening to other people I shot. I felt invaded. A lot of unknown people contacting me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform 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 entering your Twitter, Facebook, private 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 invaded."

Life Changing Circumstances

Neither 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 turn their lives upside down.

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

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

Nery who has not once left the country states: "This situation is distant from my reality. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, much less in a different country."