JEE Advaced Rank Scam - is this even possible?

One of my relatives child got 5k rank in JEE Advanced 2025. Congratulated when i met them in a family function. Fast forward 3 months - today i came to know from a common relative that the Advanced rank was actually incorrect. Father paid JoSAA fees and they, along with a few relatives, landed in the assigned IIT and learnt that their records show a different name against that rank. They went to IIT Kanpur - who confirmed that the child doesnt feature in the rank list. Child logs into gmail id and it appears to be hacked and all mails are deleted. The only thing the child remembers is sharing JEE Mains login and pwd in a forum. They have lodged a complaint in Cybercell who directed to a Ethical hacking team. As per the Ethical hacking team, someone has hacked the childs gmail and JEE login and done something hanky panky. Infact IIT Kanpur interrogated the child and concluded that the child is not lying but they cannot act unless they have concrete proof. the child didnt apply any where else and is now repenting. The parents have approached a lawyer but i guess this is going to be a long drawn process . I didnt want to speak to the parents because they and the kid are quite depressed. However, i am unable to connect the dots. The child has 98% + percentile in Mains and could have got somewhere. If this is indeed done by a hacker, i am clueless as to how this happened. IF the child was lying, would have still applied for NIT/ GFTI in JoSAA. Anyone faced / heard similar experiences?