Brazilian photographer deletes account after vote chori image row

Matheus Ferrero, a photographer from Brazil’s Belo Horizonte, has deleted his Instagram account after his 2017 photo became the focus of online attention and harassment following Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” allegations related to the Haryana elections.

The image, taken with the consent of the woman featured and titled “Woman Wearing Blue Denim Jacket,” was uploaded to stock photography platforms such as Unsplash and Pexels, where it was freely available for download.

The development comes a day after Rahul Gandhi alleged that voter fraud occurred in the 2024 Haryana state elections, claiming that the face of a Brazilian woman appeared on 22 voter ID records under different names.

"Who is this lady? What is her name? Where does she come from? But she voted 22 times in Haryana, at 10 different booths, and has multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi, Vilma...," said Rahul Gandhi, alleging that the image of the woman's image was used for several voters in Haryana.

"But turns out she is actually a Brazilian model," added Rahul Gandhi.

Following the press conference, the woman’s photo made headlines all over the nation. The image, originally uploaded to stock sites like Unsplash and Pexels, was freely available online and had appeared in multiple publications internationally.

Ferrero said his accounts were hacked after the controversy and that people had misunderstood the photo’s status as a stock image.

Meanwhile, the report also stated that the woman in question is a hairdresser in Minas Gerais and she denies any connection to the elections, saying she had never travelled to India.

While talking about the controversy, she explained that she had posed for the photo to help a friend and had given permission for it to be used on stock platforms.

On the other hand, Bharatiya Janata Party’s head of IT cell, Amit Malviya, dismissed the claims and called the allegation baseless and sarcastically suggested the woman travelled to Haryana to stage a “carnival of votes.”

This is the third state election in which Gandhi has accused the ruling party of vote tampering. The new allegation came just a day before Bihar went to polls in the first phase of Assembly elections.

- Ends