On 5 November 2025, during his vote chori press conference– ‘The H files’, Rahul Gandhi alleged that a Brazilian woman had voted 22 times in 10 booths during the 2024 Haryana Assembly elections (here, here, and here). Rahul Gandhi alleged that this was a stock photo captured by a photographer named Matheus Ferrero.
In this context, a video (and its screenshots) of a woman (here, here, here, here, here, and here), allegedly the Brazilian model herself, who was featured in the press conference, is now circulating on social media. The video in which she is speaking in Portuguese apparently shows her saying, ‘Failed Politician Who Lost 100 Elections Uses My Old Pics for Propaganda – His Party Workers Won’t Stop Proposing in DMs.’ We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: This video shows the Brazilian model, whose photograph was allegedly registered in the 2024 Haryana elections voter list 22 times, according to Rahul Gandhi, calling him a failed politician who has lost 100 elections and is using her photograph for propaganda. In the video, she accused Congress party workers of harassing her on her DM’s.
Fact: The woman in the video is the same person highlighted in Rahul Gandhi’s press conference. Her name is Larissa Nery, and she is a hairdresser from Brazil. According to multiple news reports, she explained that her old stock photo was used without her involvement and clarified that she has no involvement in Indian politics. To verify the reports, we transcribed her Portuguese speech using Google’s NotebookLM tool and found that what was reported in the media was indeed accurate. She did not make any statements against Rahul Gandhi or the Congress party. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To verify the claim, we searched the internet using relevant keywords to determine whether the Brazilian model featured in Rahul Gandhi’s 5 November 2025 ‘vote chori’ press conference had made any comments about him. Through this search, we found multiple media reports (here, here, here, here, and here) that featured screenshots from the viral video.
According to these reports, her name is Larissa Nery, who is ‘a hairdresser who owns a salon in Belo Horizonte, the capital of Brazil’s second-largest state, Minas Gerais.’ She posted the video, now going viral, as an Instagram story, expressing shock over how her photo was being used for voting in India.
According to a news report published by NDTV on her video, she said ‘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?”..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, in the Portuguese language.
She reportedly said that she agreed to take this photo for a friend a long time ago and that she is not even a model. The News Minute, The Print, and The Hindustan Times have also reported the same about the video.
Further, we found a report published on this issue by ‘Aos Fatos,’ a Brazilian fact-checking organisation. Speaking to them, she denied having any kind of connection to the Indian elections.‘She explained that she is not a model and only posed for the photo to help a friend at the time. The photographer asked for permission to post the image on websites, she allowed it, and since then her image has been used in thousands of publications,’ reported Aos Fatos.
According to this report and a report published by NDTV, the photographer who took the photo, Matheus Ferrero, deleted his Instagram account after the photo went viral.
To verify what she said in Portuguese in the viral video, we ran the video through Google’s NotebookLM and found the transcription for her Portuguese speech. It matched what was reported in the media.
Furthermore, we found that Larissa has spoken to NDTV about this situation, clarifying that she has never been to India. She apparently thought it was a bad joke at first and felt scared after she understood what was actually happening.
To sum up, a video of Brazilian hairdresser Larissa expressing shock over her old photograph being misused in the Indian elections is shared with misleading claims.
