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

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

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

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

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 going on.

The Events That Transpired

What had occurred 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 endorse an oath with the names of ineligible voters "so that necessary proceedings could be initiated". They did not respond to the particular allegations he made and did not provide statements on Nery's case.

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

In his most recent 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 invalid addresses. He blamed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged tampering of the voters' list.

To prove 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 images.

"What person is this woman? What age is she? She votes 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 multiple voter entries under different 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 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 "individuals from India, many of them reporters", has left her scared.

"I became scared. I cannot determine if it is risky for me or if speaking about it could harm someone there. I do not know who is correct 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 check messages from my clients. Many journalists 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 bothering my workplace. My boss even talked to me. Some people consider it a meme, but it is impacting me professionally."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

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 television series - to him.

He's still trying to make sense of 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 stated.

"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 fraud. I ignored and reported it."

But since Gandhi's media appearance, "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 searched online and realised what was happening, but at first I had no idea."

Ferrero says some websites placed his pictures next to Nery's photo without authorization. "Individuals were creating jokes, like transforming it into a game show joke. It's ridiculous."

In 2017, Ferrero was just starting out as a photographer when he asked Nery, who he knew, to come out for a photoshoot. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also uploaded them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her consent.

"The photo blew up… reached around 57 million impressions," 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 fear, because the photos were being improperly used. I got scared imagining this occurring to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people coming at me. You think 'Did I do something wrong?' But I didn't. The website was open and I uploaded like countless of others." He's also now made the original Facebook post with her photos private.

"When you see people accessing your Twitter, Facebook, private Instagram, you panic. The first response is to close all accounts and figure things out later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt invaded."

Life Changing Circumstances

Not one of Ferrero nor 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 positive. But I don't truly know the specifics," he responded.

Nery who has not once left the country states: "This is distant from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in a different country."