Shareable Nodes removeSharedSet() API throws InvalidItemStateException

JCR data structure is as follows

/metadata
/metadata/metadataNode1
/metadata/metadataNode2
/metadata/metadataNode3
/metadataGroup/group1
/metadataGroup/group1/metadataNode1
/metadataGroup/group1/metadataNode2
/metadataGroup/group2
/metadataGroup/group2/metadataNode1
/metadataGroup/group2/metadataNode3

The /metadataGroup/group1/<metadataNode> is created using workspace.clone() method and the <metadataNode> is cloned from the /metadata path to the /metadataGroup path

All the nodes are shareable.

Using the getSharedSet() API on /metadata/metadataNode1 shows a count of 3

But I am not able to remove all the metadataNode1 nodes using the removeSharedSet API
It throws an error javax.jcr.InvalidItemStateException: Unable to find "{}metadata/{}metadataNode1"; lowest existing path is "/{}metadata"