Image Source th-i.thgim
NEW DELHI/BELO HORIZONTE—The high-stakes world of Indian electoral politics has collided with the global market for stock photography, leaving a bewildered Brazilian hairdresser at the center of a massive controversy and forcing her to take down her social media accounts to escape viral fame.
The unusual story began when Congress leader and Leader of the Opposition, Rahul Gandhi, held a press conference to unveil his “H-Files,” alleging systematic “vote theft” in the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections. As proof, Gandhi presented a screenshot of the electoral roll, claiming the photograph of a woman, who he identified as a “Brazilian model,” had been used fraudulently for 22 different voters—registered under names like “Seema,” “Sweety,” and “Saraswati”—across multiple booths.
From Stock Photo to Political Bomb
The image, which turned out to be a stock photograph taken back in 2017 and available for free public use on platforms like Unsplash, quickly went viral. Internet sleuths and media outlets soon identified the woman in the photo as Larissa Nery, a hairdressing professional from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, who had done some modeling work in her youth.
Speaking in a video posted before she deleted her accounts, Nery expressed utter shock and disbelief at the situation.
“Guys, I can’t believe this,” Nery said. “They’re using an old photo of mine—I was 18 or 20 in that picture! They’re portraying me as Indian to scam people. What madness, what craziness is this?”
The unexpected exposure to a political firestorm on the other side of the world resulted in her accounts being flooded with comments, queries, and interview requests from Indian followers and journalists. While initially amused by the sudden international attention, Nery was ultimately overwhelmed and chose to retreat from social media, a move that highlights the unforeseen personal cost of high-profile political allegations in the digital age.
Allegations Versus Evidence
Rahul Gandhi asserted that the use of a stock image for multiple entries was proof of a “centralized operation” to manipulate the voter list and alleged that over 25 lakh voters in Haryana were fake.
However, the Election Commission of India (ECI) swiftly pushed back, calling the claims “unfounded.” The ECI noted that no formal complaints or appeals regarding duplicate entries were filed by Congress’s Booth Level Agents (BLAs) during the revision process. The ECI also pointed out that the presence of a duplicate photo, often a result of mass entry errors using stock images, does not automatically translate into a fraudulent vote being cast, challenging the narrative of a “stolen” election.
The ongoing controversy marks an unprecedented intersection of global stock photography and Indian democratic processes, as both political parties and the ECI wrestle with the implications of the viral “Brazil model” while the face of the controversy tries to find peace thousands of miles away.
[Newsroom staff written original, where key claims or facts are used, I’ve referenced the original sources (like The Hindu, The Indian Express, Times of India, NDTV, etc.) transparently.]
