A day after Congress MP Rahul Gandhi alleged large-scale voter fraud in Haryana by claiming that a Brazilian model’s photograph had appeared multiple times across the state’s electoral rolls, India Today TV uncovered a striking example that adds a new twist to the controversy. In the Rai constituency, the same photo was found linked to a deceased voter named Guniya, who had died more than two years ago.
According to her family, Guniya, the wife of Vinod, passed away in March 2022, yet her name still features on the 2024 voter list — this time with the photo of a foreign woman. “We don’t understand how this happened,” said her mother-in-law, who shared Guniya’s death certificate with reporters. “She voted before she died, but how her name and that strange picture are still there, we cannot explain.” The family expressed shock that a person long deceased could still appear as an active voter, especially with a completely unrelated image attached.
The discovery supports Rahul Gandhi’s claim that voter data manipulation and photo mismatches are widespread in Haryana’s electoral system. During his Wednesday press conference, Gandhi had alleged that the photograph of a Brazilian model was used repeatedly under different names such as Seema, Sweety, and Saraswati, across several booths in Rai constituency. Calling it “the biggest election manipulation in India’s history,” he accused the BJP and the Election Commission of colluding to distort results in the 2024 Haryana Assembly polls.
“Haryana has two crore voters, and around 25 lakh of them are fake,” Gandhi said, asserting that nearly 12 percent of the state’s electorate consisted of fabricated or duplicated entries. “This is centralised manipulation — a theft of democracy,” he declared, alleging that these discrepancies turned a likely Congress win into defeat.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian model at the centre of the controversy has spoken out, expressing surprise and mild amusement over her unexpected involvement in Indian politics. Identified as Larissa, she said the image in question was a stock photograph from her early modelling career, sold online without her knowledge. “I have nothing to do with Indian politics,” she clarified in a video message. “My photo was taken from a stock image website — I didn’t even know it was being used this way. I’ve never been to India.”
Larissa, who is now a digital influencer and hairdresser in Brazil, said she woke up to find her social media flooded with comments from Indian users. “Suddenly, my Instagram was full of Indian followers. People were writing things like, ‘Congratulations!’ as if I had contested the elections!” she said with a laugh. “To all my new Indian followers, thank you — but please know, it wasn’t me, it was just my picture.”
While Larissa took the incident lightly, the case has underscored deep flaws in India’s voter registration system, where outdated records, mislinked photos, and duplicate entries have repeatedly surfaced. Election officials in Sonipat district have since confirmed that an internal verification of voter rolls is underway to identify and correct such mismatches.
For now, the “Brazilian woman photo” has become both a political flashpoint and a symbol of a deeper problem — the fragility of India’s massive electoral database, where clerical errors and poor oversight can easily snowball into national controversy.
