Larissa Nery, a Brazilian hairdresser, has found herself at the center of an unexpected controversy in India this week. Her photograph, used in allegations of election fraud, has made headlines across the country. Speaking to the BBC, Nery stated that her initial reaction was disbelief, dismissing it as a mistake or a practical joke.
However, the situation quickly escalated as her social media accounts were inundated with messages and tags on Instagram.
“At first, it was just a few random messages. I assumed they had mistaken me for someone else,” she told the BBC. “Then, they sent me the video where my face appeared on a large screen. I initially thought it was AI or some kind of prank. But when numerous people began messaging simultaneously, I realized it was real.”
Nery, who resides in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Minas Gerais state in southeastern Brazil, and has never visited India, resorted to Google to understand the unfolding situation.
The controversy stemmed from a press conference held by Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday. Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP party and the Election Commission (EC) of rigging the previous year’s election in Haryana state. The BJP has refuted these allegations.
Shortly after the press conference, the Chief Electoral Officer of Haryana shared a post on X, including a letter purportedly sent to Gandhi in August. The letter requested Gandhi to sign an oath containing the names of ineligible voters “so that necessary proceedings could be initiated.” The office did not address the specific allegations made by Gandhi, nor did they comment on Nery’s case. The BBC has reached out to the Election Commission for a response.
Gandhi has been making a series of accusations of “vote theft” against the Election Commission since early August.
In his recent claims, Gandhi stated that his team had examined the Election Commission’s voter list data and discovered approximately 2.5 million irregular entries out of 20 million voters. These irregularities included duplicates, bulk voters, and invalid addresses. He attributed his party’s defeat in the Haryana election to this alleged manipulation of the voters’ list.
To substantiate his claims, he presented several slides on a large screen. One slide showed Gandhi standing in front of a large image of Nery, while another displayed a compilation of 22 voters with different names and addresses, all using her photograph.
“Who is this lady? How old is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana,” Gandhi questioned.
He explained that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been repeatedly used across multiple voter entries under different names. He described Nery as a model who had appeared on the voters’ list under various names, including Seema, Sweety, and Saraswati.
The 29-year-old confirmed to the BBC that the photograph was indeed of her. “Yes, it is me. Much younger, but it is me. I am the person in the images.”
She clarified that she works as a hairdresser, not a model, and that the photo was taken in March 2017 when she was 21, just outside her home. According to Nery, the photographer “thought I was pretty and asked to take photos of me.”
Now, years later, the attention from “people from India, many of them journalists,” over the past two days has left her feeling frightened.
“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 only brought to mind Caminho das Índias – a popular Brazilian television drama from 2009.
He is still trying to comprehend the events of the last few days that have unfolded in a country thousands of miles away.
Ferrero told the BBC that he had been contacted by people from India a week prior, inquiring about the identity of the woman in the photo.
“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 said. “I thought it was a scam. I blocked and reported it.”
However, 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 posted his pictures alongside Nery’s photo without permission. “People were making memes, like turning it into a game show joke. It’s absurd.”
In 2017, Ferrero, then a budding photographer, invited Nery, whom he knew, for a photoshoot. Ferrero said he shared the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash – a photo-sharing website – with her consent.
“The photo blew up… reached around 57 million views,” he said.
He has since removed the link from his Unsplash account but shared screenshots taken earlier, which 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.”
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