The Way a South American Lady Became the Face of India Election Scam Controversy

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 reported election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a error. Or a joke.

But then her online profiles blew up and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

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

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

What Had Happened

What had taken place was the fallout of a media briefing by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday where he accused 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 rejected the claims.

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 declaration with the names of unqualified voters "so that necessary actions 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 number of accusations of "electoral fraud" 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, multiple registrations and invalid addresses. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this reported manipulation of the voters' list.

To demonstrate 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 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 multiple times 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 Reality Behind the Photo

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

She explained 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 photograph 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 affect someone there. I do not know who is correct or incorrect because I do not know the groups involved," she said.

"I did not go to work in the morning because I could not even check messages from my clients. Many reporters were contacting me. They found the number of the place where I work.

"I needed to delete the salon name from my profile because they were bothering my workplace. My boss even talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is affecting me in my career."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who captured 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 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 explained.

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

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

"Individuals 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 happening, but at first I had no idea."

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 absurd."

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 posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo blew up… reached around 57 million impressions," 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 session.

"I removed them out of fear, because the photos were being improperly used. I got frightened imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt invaded. A lot of unknown people coming at 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 restricted.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first reaction is to shut everything down and understand 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 other end of the world could turn their lives upside down.

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

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

Nery who has never left the country says: "This is far from my everyday life. I do not even pay attention to elections in Brazil, let alone in another country."