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.
🔴#BREAKING | Brazilian Woman, At Centre Of Rahul Gandhi H-Bomb Row, Reacts
NDTV’s @aishvaryjain joins @Vasudha156 with more details pic.twitter.com/gCwnbBMPhB
— NDTV (@ndtv) November 6, 2025
“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.
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 just 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 Gandhi’s big charge sent millions of social media users searching for the photographer. 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.