The Brazilian “model”, who went viral this week due to Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” (vote theft) claim, has since been identified as Larissa Nery. Although actually a hairdresser, who owns a salon in Brazil’s Belo Horizonte, she became the centre of infamous headlines after the Congress leader flashed the burning question “Yeh kaun hai (who is she?)” during a YouTube broadcast on Wednesday.

Despite having no ties to India, the so-called model’s reportedly years-old photograph was red-flagged during Gandhi’s November 5 press conference, where he dragged her into explosive voter ID scam allegations. Larissa has since issued a response to what she saw as a hilarious development in a country where she never even set a foot.

Brazilian ‘model’ Larissa reacts to Rahul Gandhi’s claims

Larissa released a video message via social media, claiming that a photo of her from the time she was possibly a teen was being used to generate gossip-worthy buzz in India.

“Guys, I can’t believe these people are gossiping. They’re using an old photo of mine; I was 18 or 20 in that photo. They’re portraying me as Indian to scam people. What madness! What craziness is this, what world do we live in?” she exclaimed, as per the English translation of her Portuguese message found online.

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She even went on to brand it all a “comedy” in her interaction with Luiz Fernando Menezes, a senior reporter at the Brazilian news agency Aos Fatos (in collaboration with India’s ThePrint). Countering her so-called “model” identity, she spilled, “I am not even a model,” and that she had only agreed to take the “very old” photo for a photographer friend.

Nery laid more emphasis on the picture being ancient history, saying that she didn’t even know her pal’s whereabout anymore. The Brazilian woman added that she had no clue where the image was first uploaded, but had seen it being used “in millions of things” since then.

Her video reaction now going viral on social media caught her joking about how she has suddenly become famous in India as the “mysterious Brazilian model.” Her Instagram (larinerym) account has since gone private.

The response, reportedly posted on Instagram, recorded her calling out a reporter, who went as far as contacting the salon where she works. Larissa divulged that the journalist was looking to interview her, but she ultimately looked the other way over her understandable apprehensions.

Nonetheless, the reporter didn’t give in and finally reached out to her via Instagram. Apart from the video she released, Nery again alluded to the social media encounter while speaking to Aos Fatos’ Luiz Fernando Menezes, who presumably was the very journalist she was talking about.

“I thought he was a criminal trying to scam me,” she said of the Brazilian reporter, with ThePrint adding that Larissa only came to believe Luiz was a journalist after the story was published.

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Why did Rahul Gandhi speak out against the ‘Brazilian model’?

Amplifying his “vote chori” allegations against the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission, Gandhi suggested that 25 lakh fake votes was recorded in the Haryana assembly elections (2024). “Haryana has 2 crore voters, and 25 lakh of them are fake,” he said at the recent press conference, adding that he had “100 percent proof” backing his incendiary claims.

Among the said fake voter entries he was speaking out against, RaGa insisted that some of them were associated with the same photograph despite being listed under different names. And so, he went on to flash a picture of a woman, who allegedly ended up on the Haryana voters’ list under multiple names like Seema, Sweety and Saraswati. Per Gandhi’s account, she had cast vote 22 times. “This image shows how identities have been duplicated to inflate vote counts,” he asserted.

Additionally, RaGa displayed a QR code, which would led viewers to a stock image (titled “woman wearing blue denim jacket”) of a Brazilian woman uploaded on the platform Unsplash by photographer Matheus Ferrero.