Who is Larissa Nery? The Brazilian hairdresser caught in Rahul Gandhi’s ‘voter fraud’ storm

New Delhi: A day after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claimed that a Brazilian model’s photograph had been used to commit voter fraud in Haryana, the internet has been abuzz trying to track down the woman behind the viral image.

The so-called “mysterious model” has now been identified — and she isn’t a model at all.

According to a joint report by ThePrint and Brazilian outlet Aos Fatos, the woman is Larissa Nery, a hairdresser from Minas Gerais, a state in southeastern Brazil. She runs a salon in Belo Horizonte, the state’s capital and Brazil’s first planned modern city.

“I think all of this is a comedy,” Nery told Luiz Fernando Menezes of Aos Fatos. “This photo is very old. I am not even a model,” she clarified, adding that the picture was taken years ago to help out a photographer friend.

She has since lost touch with him and has “seen it used in millions of things” online. The image in question was reportedly shot in 2017 by photographer Matheus Ferrero, who uploaded it to Unsplash, a popular free stock image platform.

After the controversy broke, Ferrero deleted the photo from his profile and later deactivated his Instagram account following a flood of messages from Indian users.

Nery, who has around 5,400 followers on Instagram, also took to social media expressing disbelief that her face was being linked to “voting in India.”

In a recent video, the hairdresser confirmed that the viral photo was hers, taken when she was about 20 years old.

“They are using a photo of mine to run, I don’t know if it’s an election… and in India, they are portraying me as an Indian woman to scam others,” she said in Portuguese.

Overnight, the unsuspecting stylist found herself fielding calls from journalists and bewildered by her sudden fame. “Oh my God, how crazy. What madness is this, what world are we living in?” she exclaimed.