Brazilian Photographer Matheus Ferrero Delete His Instagram After Rahul Gandhi’s Allegations (Source: X/ sierra)
A Brazilian photographer, Matheus Ferrero, unexpectedly found himself at the centre of a political controversy in India after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi used one of his stock photographs to allege large-scale voter fraud in Haryana’s elections.
Matheus Ferrero is a professional photographer from Belo Horizonte, Brazil. An independent online search shows that his work is featured on platforms like Unsplash, where he shares portraits, fashion, and product photography.
Ferrero’s portfolio reflects a mix of artistic and commercial styles, earning widespread visibility across stock photo websites. However, the identity of the woman whose image appeared in the alleged voter list remains undisclosed.
During a press conference, Rahul Gandhi accused the Election Commission of India (ECI) of facilitating vote manipulation in Haryana’s Rai Assembly seat. He claimed that the same woman’s image appeared 22 times in the voter list under different names like Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, and Vimla.
Gandhi said, “This is a centralised operation. Somebody fed this lady into the electoral list at a centralised level, not at the booth level.”
He further alleged that the ECI ignored the duplicates intentionally, stating, “The Election Commission can remove duplicates in a second. Why don’t they do it? Reason: they are helping the BJP.”
The Congress leader asserted he had “100 per cent proof” of a plan that turned “Congress’s landslide victory into a loss.”
The woman’s image that Gandhi presented as “proof” was, in fact, a stock photograph taken by Matheus Ferrero, a professional photographer based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The picture titled “Woman wearing blue denim jacket”was originally shot in 2017 and made available for free download on popular stock platforms Unsplash and Pexels, where it has been downloaded over 400,000 times.
After Gandhi’s claims went viral, Ferrero’s name began trending worldwide on social media. Many users mistakenly believed the woman in the photo was Ferrero himself.
Speaking to the Brazilian fact-checking agency Aos Fatos, Ferrero said the sudden attention led to hacking attempts and online harassment, forcing him to delete his Instagram account.
"They literally hacked all my accounts. There were a lot of strange people saying all sorts of things," he told the outlet, adding that most people didn’t realise it was just a freely available stock photo.
The woman in the image, Larissa Nery, clarified that she is not a model, and had posed for the photo years ago just to help a friend. She confirmed that Ferrero had her consent to share the image online.
In a viral video, Larissa expressed shock over the photo’s use in an Indian political controversy. "Guys, they are using an old photo of mine. It’s an old photo, okay? I was like 18 or 20 years old... And in India! They’re portraying me as Indian to scam people, guys. What madness! What craziness is this? What world do we live in?" she said.
Sources within the Election Commission of India dismissed Gandhi’s accusations, questioning why Congress’s polling agents failed to raise objections during voting.
"They are supposed to object if the elector has already voted or if they doubt the identity of the elector," an ECI source said.
The official also asked whether Gandhi supported the Special Intensive Revision drive, which aims to remove duplicate and outdated entries from voter lists.
Union Minister Kiren Rijiju criticised Gandhi’s remarks, calling them “fake issues.”
"Polling is happening in Bihar, yet he’s telling stories about Haryana. There’s nothing left in Bihar, so he’s shifting the narrative to Haryana," Rijiju said.
He added that exit polls and opinion polls often differ from actual results, saying, “This keeps happening — it’s nothing new. We never made any allegations against the Election Commission.”
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