In the early hours of Wednesday (5), the photo of a Brazilian woman appeared on the front pages of India’s major newspapers. According to a member of the Indian National Congress, the main opposition party to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the model’s image was allegedly used to commit voter fraud in the Haryana state elections, held in October of last year.
The accusation, made during a live YouTube broadcast, claimed that the Brazilian woman’s face appeared on 22 different voter ID records in that election.
The accusation prompted the Indian press to investigate the model’s identity. The photo used in India was originally taken by Matheus Ferrero, a photographer from Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, in 2017.
The image was available on websites such as Unsplash and Pexels, which allow the free use of content as long as the author is credited. Because of this, the same photo had already appeared in multiple articles and advertisements in different countries — not just in India. After the accusation, however, the image was removed from those platforms.
Aos Fatos found that the photo has even been used to create fake social media profiles.
Although the images did not include the model’s name, Aos Fatos confirmed — through reverse image searches and analysis of Ferrero’s social media accounts — that the woman is a hairdresser named Larissa Nery who also lives in Minas Gerais and participated in a photoshoot with the photographer in March 2017.
In a statement to Aos Fatos, Nery denied any connection to the Indian elections. She explained that she is not a professional model and only posed for the photo to help a friend at the time. The photographer asked for permission to upload the image to stock sites, which she granted — and since then, her image has been used in thousands of publications.
A review of her social media accounts revealed no evidence that she ever traveled to India. In October of last year, around the election period, she posted a video of her work in Belo Horizonte.
Aos Fatos also spoke with Matheus Ferrero, who deleted his Instagram account after the Indian complaint went viral. "They literally hacked all my accounts. There were a lot of strange people saying all sorts of things," he said via message. According to Ferrero, people must not have understood that it was a photo from a free platform.
‘Carnival of Votes’
The accusation of electoral fraud was made on Wednesday (5) by Rahul Gandhi, a member of the Indian National Congress party. In a live press conference, the opposition leader accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the Election Commission of manipulating the results of the Haryana state elections, held in October last year.
According to the allegation, the Brazilian woman’s face appeared in voter records 22 times, under different names — an alleged sign of vote manipulation.
“This happened in ten polling booths, which means it was a centralized operation. Someone inserted this woman into the voter list at a central level, not at the local polling station,” Gandhi said, speaking in front of a large screen showing repeated images of the Brazilian model.
The opposition leader claimed his party had identified 2.5 million votes with signs of irregularities, including duplicate voters.
During the presentation, Gandhi said the photo used for voter registration had come from a stock image website, prompting Indian media outlets to race to identify the photographer and the woman — dubbed by local newspapers as the “mystery model.”
This marks the third state election in which Gandhi has accused the ruling party of tampering with results. The new allegation comes just before voters in the state of Bihar head to the polls, in what is seen as a decisive election for the future of Narendra Modi, the conservative populist who has governed India since 2014.
After Gandhi’s statements, Amit Malviya, head of the BJP’s IT and social media department, sought to downplay the accusations, claiming that the opposition had suggested the Brazilian woman personally traveled to Haryana to stage a “carnival of votes.”
Aos Fatos reached out to the Embassy of India in Brasília for comment. This article will be updated if a response is received.
The Path of Verification
Indian journalists contacted Aos Fatos on Wednesday morning (5) seeking help to identify the model whose image was featured in the opposition’s fraud accusation.
The newsroom conducted a reverse image search and analyzed the photographer’s social media posts to identify the woman. Reporters also contacted her and the salon where she works. We looked for evidence that she had traveled to India in 2024 — the period of the alleged fraud — but found no records of such a trip.
Finally, Aos Fatos reached out to the Indian embassy.
