Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s press conference on vote theft put the spotlight on a Brazilian woman, whose photo, the Leader of Opposition claimed, appeared multiple times on Haryana’s electoral roll. A day after the claims were made, the Internet abuzz with her identity and her video reaction expressing shock at the development.
Since the press conference, the woman’s photograph has gone viral, with intense speculation about her identity, profession and whereabouts. A number of memes and satirical posts, using her image, are also doing the rounds of social media.
A video of the woman as claiming that the photo shown at the press conference is an old photo of hers, has now gone viral online. “Guys, they are using an old photo of mine. It is an old photo, okay? I was young in the photo, I was like 18 or 20 years old... I do not know if it is an election or something about voting that you have to vote for. And in India. Ah! They are portraying me as Indian to scam people, guys. What madness!” she was quoted, according to a rough translation of the video from Portuguese.
Supriya Shrinate, Congress party’s social media head, shared a video of the woman, identified as Larissa Nery, purportedly reacting to her image going viral, after Rahul showed it at his press conference on Wednesday and claimed that it was used 22 times at 10 booths in the Rai Assembly constituency of Haryana, with names such as “Seema, Sweety and Saraswati” on the electoral list. After showing her photograph, Rahul asked reporters to guess the nationality of the woman.
“So, last guesses, I am going to give a prize if anybody can guess this. Anybody? She is from Brazil. She is a Brazilian model. That is a stock photograph and she is one of 25 lakh such records in Haryana. This is proof of a centralised operation and I am going to show you,” he said at the presser.
The LoP in the Lok Sabha alleged that the Haryana polls last year were “stolen”. He cited voter list data to claim that 25 lakh entries were fake and the Election Commission of India colluded with the BJP to ensure that the party won the polls.
