FlexGroup SnapMirror relationship fails with Volume access error Stale NFS file handle

• ONTAP 9.12.1
• SnapMirror
• FlexGroup

• A pre-existing  FlexGroup SnapMirror relationship was deleted & recreated with Custom policy and no schedule.
• It fails during initialization with the below error:

Group Update failed (Failed to complete update operation on one or more item relationships.)

• Failure identified on one of the Constituents:

Audit logs:

Fri Apr 14 03:15:42 BST 2023 Initialize[Apr 13 11:47:54]:2090b1cb-d9e8-11ed-9680-d039ea4a2424 Operation-Uuid=00b90e33-2002-49a3-9d21-b04720a6786c Group=flexgroup Operation-Cookie=0 action=End source=svm1:vol01__0001 destination=svm2:vol01__0001 status=Failure message=Transfer failed.(Volume access error(Stale NFS file handle)

SKTrace logs:

[5:0] QTREE_ERR: <od_qtree_execute_op:207 opcode 5(d-qtree-list-info) vol_id 1112 err=15000(Snapmirror volume is not initialized).

 [6:0] QTREE_CCMA_ERR: get_qtree_stats:342 Unable to get qtree statistics for vol01__0001, error: 50101.

EMS Logs:

 [Node: wafl_exempt07: wafl.mirror.access.denied:error]: Access to SnapMirror volume 'vol01__0001' was denied because SnapMirror initialization was not complete (exported Snapshot copy identifier '0' is invalid).

Fri Apr 14 03:00:19 +0100 [Node: wafl_exempt00: wafl.repl.send.inode.err:debug]: params: {'fattr_size': '8192', 'wafl_type': '1', 'cpCount': '14198', 'errString': 'Stale NFS file handle', 'SnapMirrorID': '2090b1cb-d9e8-11ed-9680-d039ea4a2424', 'fhFileid': '4870918', 'errorCode': '70', 'volFsid': '1112', 'wria_flags_mask': '0x1d6d9fff', 'file': 'prod/common/wafl/ng/setattr.c', 'file_space': 'public file', 'volName': 'vol01__0001', 'line': '3224', 'wria_inode_mask': '0x4013bff', 'wafl_restarts': '0'}