Error "fatal: bad object" when operating git repo

The following error message is displayed when you try to operate on a git repo:

$ git pull origin main
fatal: bad object refs/stash 2
error: github.com:<repo-dir>.git did not send all necessary objects

Then the first few lines in the output of git fsck command are:

$ git fsck
Checking object directories: 100% (256/256), done.
Checking objects: 100% (10872/10872), done.
error: refs/stash 2: invalid shal pointer 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000
error: bad ref for .git/logs/refs/stash 2
dangling tree 3a010523a022452dd6f42778108813486b958f
dangling commit ed8122864d791dd0b08a511553508960a52bee
dangling commit 1202d4a652fae5206b3ed3c1401da5e32c7d2d dangling commit 84820820a72c1a52ea812d5cce8855640f0ef12
# ...

To fix it, we will need to remove the bad ref .git/refs/stash 2 and the corresponding log file .git/logs/refs/stash 2:

$ rm ".git/refs/stash 2"
$ rm ".git/logs/refs/stash 2"

Then run git fsck again to verify the repo, we will see the errors gone:

Checking object directories: 100% (256/256), done.
Checking objects: 100% (10872/10872), done.
dangling tree 3a010523a022452dd6f42778108813486b958f
dangling commit ed8122864d791dd0b08a511553508960a52bee
# ...

info

I see some people says the reason of the corruption is the operation is interrupted. In my case, it happened when I push a certain branch to the remote repo. 🥲