'What craziness is this?' Brazilian model reacts after Rahul Gandhi's Haryana 'vote chori' claims

The Brazilian “model”,  whose photograph became the talking point of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s latest “vote chori” claim in the 2024 Haryana Assembly election, has reacted with disbelief after discovering her image being circulated in Indian political debate.

Speaking in Portuguese as quoted by Indian Express, Larissa, a Brazilian model and influencer said, “Friends, I’m going to tell you a joke. They are using an old picture of me. I must have been about 18-20 years old… I don’t know if it’s an election, something about voting in India! What madness! What craziness is this, what world do we live in?"

Brazilian Model Larissa whose image has been used in Haryana for fake votes reacts to the big expose and irregularities shared by @RahulGandhi today

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According to reports, Larissa has never left Brazil — let alone travelled to India to cast 22 votes in Haryana’s Assembly election last October.

Her reaction followed after fact-checker Mohammed Zubair shared the video on social media, pointing out that the photograph shown in Gandhi’s press conference did not belong to an Indian voter.

Larissa said she had been flooded with messages and even received the viral image from a friend in another city.

According to online searches, Larissa’s photo is one of many portraits clicked by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero.

Meanwhile, News18 spoke to one of the women whose voter IDs had featured the Brazilian model’s photo. The woman, identified as Pinky Juginder Kaushik, clarified that the image mismatch was a clerical error. “Yes, I went to cast my vote myself at the village school. The names are the same, but there was a mistake with the photo — they used someone else’s picture. Nevertheless, I did vote. No one pressured me to vote. I showed my slip and then cast my vote," she told News18.

What did Rahul Gandhi say?

Gandhi alleged massive vote fraud in the Haryana Assembly polls last year. According to him, there  22 entries in the Haryana voter list with a woman's photograph. Gandhi said it was a Brazilian model.

"Who is this lady? What is her name? Where does she come from? But she votes 22 times in Haryana, at 10 different booths, and has multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vilma... But turns out she is actually a Brazilian model," he said.

According to reports, the photograph was uploaded on March 2, 2017, to the free stock image platform Unsplash by professional photographer Matheus Ferrero. The image, titled woman wearing blue denim jacket, has been viewed over 59 million times and downloaded more than 4 lakh times under the Unsplash license.

Gandhi alleged that 25 lakh votes were stolen in Haryana through 5.21 lakh duplicate voters, 93,174 invalid voters, and 19.26 lakh bulk voters. "Thousands of people associated with the BJP voted both in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh," he said.

The Election Commission responded Gandhi’s allegations, raising questions about the credibility of his claims. According to ANI, sources within the EC noted that no appeals were filed against the electoral rolls, and only 22 election petitions remain pending in the High Court for Haryana’s 90 assembly seats.

The Commission questioned why Congress polling agents did not raise objections at polling stations if they suspected duplicate voters.