‘Mysterious Brazilian model’ reacts to ‘madness’ over Rahul’s Haryana bomb

The “Brazilian model” whose photograph went viral after Rahul Gandhi’s allegations concerning the Haryana election has turned out to be a hairdresser who posed for a picture eight years ago, unaware that it would travel across the world and become the epicentre of a major political row.

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A video of the woman, identified as Larissa Nery, has now gone viral. In it, she clarifies that the photograph Rahul Gandhi shared during his press conference on Wednesday (November 5) was taken years ago when she was about 20 years old.

Brazilian woman clarifies viral photo misuse

“Guys, they are using an old photo of mine. It’s an old photo, okay? I was around 18 or 20 years old. I don’t know if it’s an election or something about voting… and in India! They’re portraying me as Indian to scam people, guys. What madness! What craziness is this? What world do we live in?” she says in the video.

She also mentioned that the media had begun contacting her after the image went viral. “A reporter called me, wanting to know about this whole thing, about going to the salon, my job, wanting to talk to me for an interview. I didn’t answer. The guy found me on Instagram and called me on Instagram,” she said.

“Now another person who has nothing to do with the matter, a friend from across the city, sent me a photo. You won’t believe it. Oh man,” she says in Portuguese.

In her latest Instagram story, she posted, “Wow, that’s crazy! I’m famous in India as the ‘mysterious Brazilian model’!”

Photo available on free stock platforms

The photograph, titled “woman wearing blue denim jacket,” is available for free download on stock photography websites such as Unsplash and Pexels.

While the woman is not named on these platforms, the photographer is identified as Matheus Ferrero, based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The image has reportedly been downloaded more than 400,000 times from these two sites.

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Brazilian news agency Aos Fatos reached out to Larissa, who clarified that she is not a model and had posed for the picture simply to help out a friend.

Photographer denies allegations

The photographer, Matheus Ferrero, sought her permission to share the image online, and she agreed. Since then, her picture has been used by numerous publications as a representational image.

Ferrero told Aos Fatos that he had to delete his Instagram account after millions of social media users began searching for his profile following Rahul Gandhi’s allegations.

“Many of them mistook me for the model’s name. They literally hacked all my accounts. There were lots of strange people saying all sorts of things,” he said. According to Ferrero, people may not have realised that the photo had been freely available on stock platforms.

Rahul Gandhi's H-files

Larissa’s photograph went viral after Rahul Gandhi’s allegations of voter fraud in Haryana assembly elections. He claimed that the Election Commission had facilitated irregularities in last year’s Haryana election, alleging that the same image of a Brazilian woman appeared 22 times in the voter list for the Rai Assembly constituency.

When someone in the audience pointed out that the woman did not appear to be from Haryana, Rahul replied, “But she votes 22 times in Haryana, and she votes in 10 different booths in Haryana, and she has multiple names — Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vimla. This is a centralised operation. Somebody inserted this lady into the electoral list at a centralised level, not at the booth level.”

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Highlighting more instances of voter IDs with the same pictures but different names, Rahul said, "The Election Commission can remove duplicates in a second. Why don't they do it? Reason, they are helping the BJP."