Dead, duplicated, misprinted: What a ‘Brazilian’ face reveals about Haryana voter list

India Today visited Rai constituency to investigate Rahul Gandhi's allegations of widespread voter fraud in the 2024 Haryana elections, claiming a Brazilian model's photo was used under multiple names. Here's what we found. When Congress leader Rahul Gandhi alleged that a “Brazilian woman’s photo appeared 22 times across 10 booths in Haryana’s Rai constituency” and called it evidence of “centralized manipulation for vote chori", the claim triggered a political storm and a curious investigation on the ground. For two days, India Today visited Machroli and neighbouring villages in Rai Assembly constituency, identifying six separate voter cases featuring the now-infamous “Brazilian model photo.” What emerged was a complex mix of clerical errors, outdated records, and possible data manipulation, painting a more nuanced picture than either side of the political divide has admitted. In two of the five cases, voters admitted that their photos had been wrongly printed, but they insisted they had cast their votes without obstruction. Pinky, a voter from Machroli, says she personally voted in the 2024 election using her Aadhaar and voter slip, “When I applied for my voter card after shifting from Delhi, it first arrived with a photo misprint, it had the picture of another woman from my village. We returned it immediately, but the corrected copy never came. I still voted using my voter slip & Aadhar Card, there’s no vote chori here.” Her brother-in-law called the controversy “propaganda,” blaming the local election office for the error. A similar account came from Munish’s family, who said her photo had been mismatched before but was rectified at the booth. “She cast her own vote. The error was in the slip, not in the vote,” her brother-in-law said. “These are operator errors, not voter fraud.” Both these testimonies refute Rahul Gandhi’s charge of organised manipulation, pointing instead to administrative lapses. But other findings are harder to explain. In one case, India Today identified a voter named Guniya (w/o Vinod), who died in March 2022. Yet, her name, paired with the Brazilian model’s photo, continued to appear in the 2024 electoral roll. “We don’t know what has happened,” said her mother-in-law, showing Guniya’s death certificate. “She hasn’t been alive for years; however, she did cast her voter before 2022 and there has been no such photo misprint issue.” This raises serious questions about voter roll updating and data verification. In another case, a voter named Bimla (w/o Ramesh) was found to have two separate entries, one genuine and another carrying a different EPIC number but the same name, house number, and a Brazilian model’s photo. The duplicate entry for Bimla appears on the Part No. 138 voter list, alongside her son Pradeep and other family members under the same house number. However, the original Bimla’s name has been shifted to Part No. 137 voter list. Bimla’s son, Pradeep told India Today, “My mother cast her vote, but this other ID with her name and that photo is fake. Whoever made this should be punished. You can see the list, all our names are under the same house number, but my mother’s photo and EPIC number are different. This is a fraudulent work.” He supported Rahul Gandhi’s allegation of “vote manipulation” and demanded an inquiry into how a duplicate voter ID could exist within the same family and makan no. The fifth case revealed another procedural lapse. Saroj, whose name appears with the Brazilian woman’s photo in Rai, had moved to Bhiwani after her marriage years ago. Her family says she hasn’t voted in Rai since 2001, yet her name continues to appear in the list with a misprinted photo. “This is a fraud. She’s registered in Bhiwani now, how is her name still here?” asked Saroj’s sister, demanding that her name be removed from the Rai voter roll. Saroj’s mother Kalawati repeated the same. Taken together, the five case studies point to a pattern of data errors and poor voter roll hygiene, rather if not a single, coordinated fraud. While two voters confirm casting their ballots freely, three others expose procedural lapses that allowed dead voters, duplicate entries, and outdated registrations to persist in official records. The recurring “Brazilian woman photo”, which Rahul Gandhi called the “face of manipulated democracy, appears to symbolise something more bureaucratic than conspiratorial: a data management crisis inside India’s voter database. Photo errors in voter lists often stem from data entry lapses during digitisation, where one image may be accidentally mapped to multiple EPIC numbers. Migration after marriage and unreported deaths also lead to duplicate or outdated records, as deletions are rarely updated in real time. In rural areas, BLOs frequently work on partially synced systems, causing mismatches when data is merged later. Weak verification of EPIC numbers further allows manual duplication or replacement, resulting in recurring cases like those seen in Rai. 22 photos of the same Brazilian woman allegedly appeared across 10 booths in Rai Assembly constituency, according to Rahul Gandhi. 5 voter records independently examined by India Today revealed, 2 cases of confirmed photo misprints without voting obstruction. 1 case of a deceased voter still active. 1 case of a duplicate entry with fake EPIC. 1 case of outdated registration post-marriage. 0 cases where a person reported being unable to vote due to the error, but 3 cases indicate flawed data management that could allow potential misuse. Officials in the Sonipat district election office have privately acknowledged that photo mismatches may have occurred due to operator-level errors during digitisation or migration of voter data. An internal verification process is reportedly underway. Rahul Gandhi’s explosive charge of “vote chori” finds some resonance in the existence of fake and duplicate IDs, but on the ground, India Today’s investigation suggests a deeper and less political problem: India’s electoral infrastructure remains vulnerable to data errors that can be easily politicised. The “Brazilian woman photo” is not a single act of voter impersonation, it’s a symptom of India’s massive and aging electoral database where clerical errors, data delays, and lack of digital integration can create phantom voters and duplicate identities. In the wrong hands, those flaws can become political ammunition, or worse, real loopholes for voter fraud.