A Brazilian hairdresser, Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her photograph was splashed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has told the BBC she initially thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.
But then her social media blew up and people started tagging her on Instagram.
At first it was a few random messages. I thought they were mistaking me for someone else, she told the BBC. Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was real.
Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she searched on Google to understand what was going on.
What had happened 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 press conference, in a post on X, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an oath with the names of ineligible voters so that necessary proceedings could be initiated. They did not respond to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case. The BBC has reached out to the poll panel for response.
Gandhi has made a series of accusations of vote theft against the poll panel since early August. In his latest 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 irregular entries - including duplicates, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation of the voters' list.
To prove 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 compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her photos.
Who is this lady? How old is she? She votes 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 described Nery as a model who had appeared on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.
The 29-year-old confirmed to the BBC that it was indeed her in the photograph. Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the person 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, thought I was pretty 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 scared.
I became scared. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the parties involved, she said.
I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling me. They found the number of the place where I work.
I had to remove 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.
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 primetime show - 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 reached out to him from India a week back, asking him who the woman in the photo was, he told the BBC.
I didn't reply. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years, he told the BBC. I thought it was a scam. I blocked and reported it.
But since Gandhi's press conference, things 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 it and realised what was happening, but at first I had no idea.
Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. People were making memes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's absurd.
In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out as a photographer when he invited Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photoshoot. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.
The photo blew up… reached around 57 million views, he said.
He has now deleted the link from his Unsplash account but he sent us 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 scared imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt invaded. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform 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 panic. The first reaction is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded.
Neither Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that happened at the other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.
We asked Ferrero if all this helped uncover electoral fraud, would that be positive?
Yes, I think that would be positive. But I don't really know the details, he said.
Nery who has never left the country says: This is far from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in another country.\
But then her social media blew up and people started tagging her on Instagram.
At first it was a few random messages. I thought they were mistaking me for someone else, she told the BBC. Then they sent me the video where my face appeared on a big screen. I thought it was AI or some joke. But then lots of people started messaging at the same time and I realised it was real.
Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has never been to India, says she searched on Google to understand what was going on.
What had happened 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 press conference, in a post on X, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a letter they said they had sent to Gandhi in August asking him to sign an oath with the names of ineligible voters so that necessary proceedings could be initiated. They did not respond to the specific allegations he made and did not comment on Nery's case. The BBC has reached out to the poll panel for response.
Gandhi has made a series of accusations of vote theft against the poll panel since early August. In his latest 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 irregular entries - including duplicates, bulk voters and invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged manipulation of the voters' list.
To prove 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 compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses but all with her photos.
Who is this lady? How old is she? She votes 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 described Nery as a model who had appeared on the voters' list under many names, including Seema, Sweety and Saraswati.
The 29-year-old confirmed to the BBC that it was indeed her in the photograph. Yes. It is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the person 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, thought I was pretty 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 scared.
I became scared. I cannot tell if it is dangerous for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is right or wrong because I do not know the parties involved, she said.
I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even see messages from my clients. Many journalists were calling me. They found the number of the place where I work.
I had to remove 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.
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 primetime show - 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 reached out to him from India a week back, asking him who the woman in the photo was, he told the BBC.
I didn't reply. I'm not going to give someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years, he told the BBC. I thought it was a scam. I blocked and reported it.
But since Gandhi's press conference, things 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 it and realised what was happening, but at first I had no idea.
Ferrero says some websites put his pictures next to Nery's photo without permission. People were making memes, like turning it into a game show joke. It's absurd.
In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out as a photographer when he invited Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photoshoot. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.
The photo blew up… reached around 57 million views, he said.
He has now deleted the link from his Unsplash account but he sent us 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 scared imagining this happening to other people I photographed. I felt invaded. A lot of random people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The platform 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 panic. The first reaction is to shut everything down and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded.
Neither Ferrero nor Nery have ever been to India and are still trying to understand how something that happened at the other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.
We asked Ferrero if all this helped uncover electoral fraud, would that be positive?
Yes, I think that would be positive. But I don't really know the details, he said.
Nery who has never left the country says: This is far from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in another country.\
