Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s explosive allegations of voter fraud in Haryana have taken an unexpected turn after a Brazilian woman discovered that her photograph was used in what he claimed was evidence of “fake voter identities.”

The woman, identified as Larissa, shared her shock on social media through a video, expressing disbelief over the use of her image in an Indian political controversy. “Guys, I'm gonna tell you a joke. It's too horrible! Yeah... I'll say it. They're using an old picture of mine. It's a really old photo. I was so young in it, like 18 or 20 years old. They're using my photo for... I don't know, some kind of election or voting thing in India. And they're making me look Indian to scam people or hit each other with it. Look how crazy this is! What a mess I'm in!” she said in her viral post.

She further revealed that journalists began reaching out to her after the incident gained traction in India. “Then a reporter called me, wanting to know about this thing. He even called my job to set up an interview with me. I didn't answer, so he found my Instagram and called me there. Now, someone totally unrelated, a friend of mine from another city, sent me a screenshot. I'll show it here; you won't believe it,” Larissa added.

The controversy stems from Rahul Gandhi’s November 5 press conference in New Delhi, where he accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of India (ECI) of orchestrating “large-scale voter fraud” during the 2024 Haryana Assembly Elections. Gandhi alleged that nearly 25 lakh fake votes — roughly 12 percent of the total ballots — were cast, pointing to what he termed “systemic manipulation” of electoral rolls.

As part of his evidence, Gandhi displayed multiple instances where the same photo appeared under different names in the voter database. The image, later traced back to Larissa, was originally clicked by photographer Matheus Ferrero and uploaded on Unsplash.com in 2017 under an open-use license.