Brazilian photographer deletes Instagram account amid India ‘vote chori’ row: How a photo put Matheus Ferrero in fix
The photo of a woman, taken by Matheus Ferrero in 2017, became the centre of a political storm after Rahul Gandhi shared it, alleging large-scale electoral fraud and claiming the same image appeared on multiple voter identity cards in the Haryana polls last year.
Matheus Ferrero, the Brazilian photographer whose image went viral on social media following Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi’s "vote chori" (vote theft) allegations concerning the Haryana elections, has deleted his Instagram account after a surge of online attention and subsequent harassment.
Ferrero, from Belo Horizonte in Minas Gerais, Brazil, had taken the photograph of a woman in 2017 and shared it online with her consent. The image, titled “Woman Wearing Blue Denim Jacket”, was uploaded to stock photography sites such as Unsplash and Pexels, where it was freely available for download. It has since been downloaded more than 400,000 times and widely used by various publications.
The photo became the centre of a political storm after Gandhi shared it, alleging large-scale electoral fraud and claiming the same image appeared on multiple voter identity cards in the Haryana polls last year.
Following this, Ferrero found himself trending on Indian social media. He informed the Brazilian news outlet Aos Fatos that he deleted his Instagram account after the controversy spiralled.
“They literally hacked all my accounts. There were a lot of strange people saying all sorts of things," he told Aos Fatos.
He added that many people “did not understand it was a free-use photo from a stock platform".
Who is the woman in Matheus Ferrero’s Image?
According to the Aos Fatos report, the woman in the image is a hairdresser who lives in Minas Gerais and participated in a photoshoot with the photographer in March 2017.
The hairdresser denied any connection to the Indian elections. She explained that she is not a professional model and only posed for the photograph to assist a friend at the time. The photographer asked for permission to upload the image to stock sites, which she granted—and since then, her image has been used in thousands of publications, Aos Fatos reported.
The electoral fraud allegations
The "vote chori" accusation of electoral malpractice was made on 5 November 5 by Rahul Gandhi.
In a live press conference, the opposition leader accused the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and the Election Commission of manipulating the results of the Haryana Assembly elections, which were held in October 2024.
“This happened in 10 polling booths, which means it was a centralized operation. Someone inserted this woman into the voter list at a central level, not at the local polling station,” Gandhi said.
The allegation claims that the Brazilian woman’s face was featured in voter records 22 times under different names—an alleged sign of vote manipulation. The opposition leader further claimed his party had identified 2.5 million votes that showed signs of irregularities, including duplicate voters.