How a South American Woman Became the Face of Indian Election Fraud Controversy

A South American stylist named Larissa Nery, who has been making headlines in India this week after her image was displayed over the news in an allegation about alleged election fraud, has explained that she at first thought it was all a mistake. Or a prank.

But then her social media exploded with activity and people started mentioning her on Instagram.

"Initially it was a few random messages. I thought they were mistaking 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 lots of people started messaging at the same time and I understood it was real."

Nery, who lives in Belo Horizonte, the capital city of southeastern Brazil's Minas Gerais state, and has not once been to India, says she searched on Google to understand what was happening.

What Transpired

What had occurred was the consequence of a media briefing by Indian political figure 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.

Some time 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 sign an declaration with the names of ineligible voters "so that necessary actions could be started". 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 "vote theft" against the election authority since early August.

In his most recent 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 incorrect locations. He attributed his party's loss in the Haryana election on this alleged tampering of the voters' list.

To prove his claims, he showed a series 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 images.

"What person is this lady? How old is she? She votes 22 times in Haryana," Gandhi said.

He clarified that a single stock photo of a woman, taken by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, had been used multiple times across numerous voter entries under various 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 confirmed that it was indeed 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 felt fear. I cannot determine if it is risky for me or if talking about it could affect someone there. I do not know who is right or incorrect because I do not know the groups 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 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 talked to me. Some people treat it like a meme, but it is affecting me professionally."

The Photographer's Viewpoint

Matheus Ferrero, who took Nery's photo, is also overwhelmed 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 stated.

"I didn't reply. I'm not going to provide someone's name like that. And I hadn't seen this friend in years," he explained. "I thought it was a fraud. I blocked and flagged it."

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

"People were contacting me on Instagram and Facebook. It was awful. I deactivated my Instagram to try to comprehend what was happening. Later I googled and understood what was occurring, but at first I had no idea."

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

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 posted the photos on his Facebook and also posted them on Unsplash - a photo website - with her permission.

"The photo blew up… achieved 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 session.

"I deleted them out of fear, because the photos were being improperly used. I got scared imagining this happening to other people I shot. I felt violated. A lot of unknown people contacting 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 become alarmed. The first reaction is to close all accounts and understand later. Some people thought it was funny, like a soap opera, but I felt violated."

Transformative 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 contributed to uncover electoral fraud, would that be positive?

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

Nery who has never left the country states: "This is far from my reality. I do not even follow elections in Brazil, much less in a different country."