UnicodeDecodeError: invalid start byte in METADATA file at path: - python-3.x

Question

I see that several Python-package related files have gibberish at their end.
Due to this, I am unable to do several pip operations (even basic ones like "pip list").
(Usually, I use conda by the way)
For example. When I pressed pip list. I get the following error.
ERROR: Exception:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "C:\Users\shan_jaffry\Miniconda3\envs\SQL_version\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\cli\base_command.py", line 173, in _main
status = self.run(options, args)
File "C:\Users\shan_jaffry\Miniconda3\envs\SQL_version\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\commands\list.py", line 179, in run
self.output_package_listing(packages, options)
File "C:\Users\shan_jaffry\Miniconda3\envs\SQL_version\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\commands\list.py", line 255, in output_package_listing
data, header = format_for_columns(packages, options)
File "C:\Users\shan_jaffry\Miniconda3\envs\SQL_version\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\commands\list.py", line 307, in format_for_columns
row = [proj.raw_name, str(proj.version)]
File "C:\Users\shan_jaffry\Miniconda3\envs\SQL_version\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\metadata\base.py", line 163, in raw_name
return self.metadata.get("Name", self.canonical_name)
File "C:\Users\shan_jaffry\Miniconda3\envs\SQL_version\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\metadata\pkg_resources.py", line 96, in metadata
return get_metadata(self._dist)
File "C:\Users\shan_jaffry\Miniconda3\envs\SQL_version\lib\site-packages\pip\_internal\utils\packaging.py", line 48, in get_metadata
metadata = dist.get_metadata(metadata_name)
File "C:\Users\shan_jaffry\Miniconda3\envs\SQL_version\lib\site-packages\pip\_vendor\pkg_resources\__init__.py", line 1424, in get_metadata
return value.decode('utf-8')
UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xfd in position 14097: invalid start byte in METADATA file at path: c:\users\shan_jaffry\miniconda3\envs\sql_version\lib\site-packages\hupper-1.10.2.dist-info\METADATA
I went into the file META and found the following gibberish at the end. This (I found) has been done in several other files i.e. end of files are appended with gibberish and the actual thin is removed. Any help?
> 0.1 (2016-10-21)
> ================
> -
> - Initial rele9ýl·øA

Answer 1

I found that the by manually going to the site-packages folder, and removing the two folders, :: hupper and hupper-1.10.2.dist-info and then installing hupper again using "pip install hupper", problem was solved.
The issue was that the hupper package (and hupper-1.10.2.dist-info) were corrupted. Hence uninstall and re-install helped.