'Accounts Hacked': Brazilian Photographer Deletes Instagram After Rahul Gandhi ‘Vote Chori’ Row

The Brazilian photographer whose image went viral after Congress leader Rahul Gandhi’s “vote chori” allegations in the Haryana polls has deleted his Instagram account following a surge of online attention

and harassment.

Matheus Ferrero, a photographer from Belo Horizonte, Brazil, had taken the photo 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 like Unsplash and Pexels, where it was freely available for download. It has since been downloaded more than four lakh times and widely used by various publications.

The photo unexpectedly became the centre of a political storm after Rahul Gandhi used it while alleging large-scale voter fraud, claiming the same image appeared on multiple voter IDs in Haryana. Thousands of kilometres away, Ferrero found himself trending on Indian social media, with several users even mistaking him for the woman in the picture.

Speaking to Brazilian news outlet Aos Fatos, Ferrero said 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 the publication, adding that many people “did not understand it was a free-use photo from a stock platform.”