- The viral image used by Rahul Gandhi is of Brazilian hairdresser Larissa Nery
- Larissa clarified the photo was taken eight years ago when she was about 20 years old.
- She stated her image is being misused to portray her as Indian in the Haryana election context.
The 'Brazilian model' whose face went viral after senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi's fresh allegations regarding the Haryana election is actually a hairdresser who posed for a photo eight years back, unaware that it would travel across the world and become the epicentre of a massive row.
A video of the woman, identified as Larissa Nery, has now gone viral. She is seen clarifying that the photograph Gandhi shared during a press conference yesterday was clicked years back, when she was about 20 years old.
"Guys, they are using an old photo of mine. It's an old photo, okay? I was like 18 or 20 years old. I don't know if it's an election or something about voting... And in India. Ah! They're portraying me as Indian to scam people, guys. What madness! What craziness is this? What world do we live in?" the woman says in the video.
She also said the media was reaching out to her after her photograph 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, called me on Instagram. Now, another person who has nothing to do with the matter, a friend of mine from across the city, sends me a photo. You won't believe it. Oh man," she says in Portuguese.
In her latest Instagram status, she has posed, "Wow, that's crazy! I'm Famous in India as the 'mysterious Brazilian Model'!"
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 websites, the photographer is Matheus Ferrero, based in the Brazilian city, Belo Horizonte. The photograph has been downloaded over 4 lakh times from these two websites.
Brazilian news agency Aos Fatos reached out to Larissa, who clarified that she is not a model and had posed for the photograph to help out a friend. The photographer, Matheus Ferrero, sought her permission to share the image online, and she allowed it. Since then, her image has been used by thousands of publications as a representational image.
Aos Fatos also spoke to the photographer, Matheus Ferrero. He said he had to delete his Instagram account after millions of social media users started searching for his social media profiles after Gandhi's big charge. Many of them mistook Matheus Ferrero for the model's name. "They literally hacked all my accounts. There were a lot of strange people saying all sorts of things," he said. According to Ferrero, people may not have understood that it was a photo downloaded from a free platform.
Larissa's photograph went viral after Rahul Gandhi's fresh round of allegations of vote fraud. He alleged that the Election Commission facilitated poll irregularities in the Haryana election last year. In yesterday's press conference, Gandhi alleged that the photograph of a Brazilian woman appears 22 times in the voter list for Haryana's Rai Assembly seat.
When someone in the audience pointed out that she did not appear to be from Haryana, Gandhi replied, "But she votes 22 times in Haryana, and she votes in 10 different booths in Haryana, and she has got multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vimla. This is a centralised operation. Somebody fed this lady into the electoral list at a centralised level, not at the booth level."
Showing more instances of voter IDs with the same pictures but different names, Gandhi said, "The Election Commission can remove duplicates in a second. Why don't they do it? Reason: they are helping the BJP."
"I am questioning the Election Commission and the democratic process in India, and I am doing this with 100 per cent proof. We are sure that a plan was put in motion to convert Congress's landslide victory into a loss," he said.
Sources in the Election Commission questioned what polling agents of the Congress were doing on voting day. "They are supposed to object if the elector has already voted or if they doubt the identity of the elector," a source said. The source also asked if Rahul Gandhi supports the Special Intensive Revision aimed at removing duplication from voter lists and striking off names of those who have died or moved from a particular constituency.
Union Minister Kiren Rijiju said Rahul Gandhi talks about "fake issues". "Polling is happening in Bihar, yet he's telling stories about Haryana. There's nothing left in Bihar, so he's shifting the narrative to Haryana." The Leader of the Opposition, he said, should speak on serious issues.
"They say they were winning in exit polls and opinion polls. But there's always a difference between poll predictions and actual results. This keeps happening - it's nothing new. We never made any allegations against the Election Commission," he said.
