Who is the 'Brazilian model' Rahul Gandhi says voted 22 times in Haryana?

Rahul Gandhi highlighted the image of a woman he claimed was a 'Brazilian model' allegedly used for vote fraud in Haryana, saying her photo appeared under multiple names across 10 booths

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Wednesday accused the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Election Commission of India (ECI) of voter fraud in the Haryana Assembly elections, pointing to the image of a “Brazilian model” that was allegedly used for voting by 22 different persons under different names across 10 booths.

 

Presenting a photo of the woman, Gandhi said: “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.”

 

“One fake photo is used in a single assembly segment to cast 100 votes… This is to create space for BJP people to come from other states and vote,” Gandhi alleged, adding that this was why the ECI refused to release CCTV footage from polling booths. 

 

Where did the image originate?

Gandhi also mentioned Matheus Ferrero, the photographer who clicked the image, along with a QR code leading to the stock image website Unsplash. An independent reverse image search using Google Lens showed that the photo has appeared on multiple webpages as a stock image, with the first appearance traced to March 2, 2017, on Ferrero’s Unsplash profile under the title “woman wearing blue denim jacket”.

 

While Ferrero’s page lists Belo Horizonte, Brazil, as the location, no information is available about the woman’s name or nationality.

 

At the time of publishing, the Unsplash webpage had been removed. Before deletion, the image had recorded 59,780,503 views and 421,224 downloads.

 

What else did Rahul Gandhi claim about voter manipulation?

 

Gandhi said the use of the Brazilian woman’s photo in his presentation was “for a logical reason”. He alleged that vote theft in Haryana occurred through five categories of malpractice — duplicate voters, invalid addresses, bulk voters, and the misuse of Forms 6 and 7. According to him, together, these practices accounted for 2.5 million cases of voter fraud.

 

He also claimed that access to the details of Forms 6 (additions) and 7 (deletions) was blocked by the ECI after the Congress raised concerns over alleged vote theft in Mahadevpura and Aland constituencies during the Karnataka Assembly elections.

 

“We cannot give you the exact numbers of voter deletion and addition… But we estimate the two would add up to another 7–10 lakh,” Gandhi said.

 

“We have crystal clear proof that 2.5 million voters in Haryana are fake. They either don’t exist, are duplicates, or are designed in such a way that anybody can vote. One in eight voters in Haryana are fake — that’s 12.5 per cent,” he added.