ISLAMABAD: A Brazilian woman whose photo was used as “evidence” in alleged voter fraud in India’s Haryana elections says she was shocked and frightened after seeing her face splashed across Indian news channels and social media.
Larissa Nery, a 29-year-old hairdresser from Belo Horizonte in Brazil’s Minas Gerais state, told the BBC she initially thought it was a prank when she began receiving messages from Indian users tagging her in election-related posts.
“At first, it was a few random messages,” Nery said. “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 and I realised it was real.”
The controversy erupted after Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of manipulating voter data in the 2024 Haryana state polls. Gandhi claimed that of 20 million registered voters, 2.5 million were irregular, including duplicate and fake entries.
To illustrate his claim, Gandhi showed slides displaying voter list entries that allegedly used the same woman’s photo under multiple names, such as Seema, Sweety, and Saraswati. That photo, it turned out, was of Nery — taken in 2017 by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero and later uploaded to the open-source website Unsplash.
Ferrero told the BBC that he had taken the portrait when he was starting as a photographer and shared it online with Nery’s consent. “The photo blew up — it reached around 57 million views,” he said. “But I deleted it after seeing how it was being misused.”
Both Nery and Ferrero say they have never been to India. “This is far from my reality,” Nery said. “I don’t even follow elections in Brazil, let alone in another country.”
Since the controversy began, Nery says her social media accounts have been flooded with messages, forcing her to remove her workplace details. “Some people treat it like a meme, but it’s affecting me professionally,” she said.
Ferrero described the experience as “terrifying.” “People were calling me on Instagram and Facebook. I deactivated everything. I felt invaded,” he said.
Indian authorities have not commented on how the photo ended up being used on voter lists. The Election Commission has maintained silence on the specific case but earlier dismissed allegations of voter list manipulation as “baseless.”
Meanwhile, Gandhi continues to accuse the commission of “vote theft,” saying the incident underscores systemic irregularities in India’s electoral data.
