Rahul Gandhi's 'Brazilian model voter' also has multiple LinkedIn profiles
What's the story
The photo of a Brazilian model, which Congress leader Rahul Gandhi claims was used 22 times at 10 polling booths in Haryana, was also misused on LinkedIn. The same photograph, captured and published by Brazilian photographer Matheus Ferrero, has been used to create fake professional profiles, from an Indore-based Senior Software Engineer at Meta to a Cloud Engineer at L&T. At least 11 such accounts have been found using her image across the globe, including in Los Angeles and Bahawalpur.
Profile findings
Model's photo used to create fake profiles
The model's photo has been publicly available for over eight years and is often used as a generic "symbolic" image of a woman in various blogs and news articles. In his third press conference on alleged voter manipulation, Gandhi alleged that the Brazilian model's photo appears 22 times under different names. "Who is this lady? Where does she come from?...she votes 22 times in Haryana, at 10 different booths, and has multiple names: Seema, Sweety, Saraswati, Rashmi," Gandhi said.
Allegation details
BJP won elections through 'fake votes': Gandhi
Gandhi called his revelation a "hydrogen bomb," alleging that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the elections through "fake votes" and manipulation of postal ballots. He accused the Election Commission and BJP of conspiring to turn a Congress landslide victory into a loss. "We are pretty sure that a plan was put in motion to convert the Congress's landslide victory into a loss," he said.
Election integrity
Questions raised about electoral process
The Congress leader also displayed another woman's photograph, which appears 223 times on the voter list at two polling booths. "This is the reason the Election Commission destroys CCTV footage of booths," according to him. "The Election Commission can eliminate duplicates in a second. Why don't they do it? Reason: they are helping the BJP," he added, pointing to many cases of voter IDs with the same images but different names on the state's voter list.