Spring boot RestTemplate close connection for NULL responses results in ConnectionPoolTimeoutExceptions - spring

Question

We have a spring boot Application which makes RESTFul calls to a bunch of backends, one of them returns null reponses at times, and we are observing the connections are not released during these instances because of this code in RestTemplate class:
protected <T> T doExecute(URI url, HttpMethod method, RequestCallback requestCallback,
ResponseExtractor<T> responseExtractor) throws RestClientException {
Assert.notNull(url, "'url' must not be null");
Assert.notNull(method, "'method' must not be null");
ClientHttpResponse response = null;
try {
ClientHttpRequest request = createRequest(url, method);
if (requestCallback != null) {
requestCallback.doWithRequest(request);
}
response = request.execute();
handleResponse(url, method, response);
if (responseExtractor != null) {
return responseExtractor.extractData(response);
}
else {
return null;
}
}
catch (IOException ex) {
String resource = url.toString();
String query = url.getRawQuery();
resource = (query != null ? resource.substring(0, resource.indexOf('?')) : resource);
throw new ResourceAccessException("I/O error on " + method.name() +
" request for \"" + resource + "\": " + ex.getMessage(), ex);
}
finally {
if (response != null) {
response.close();
}
}
}
Is there a way we can release the connection or consume the contents for when response is null or erring out?
Edited to add code causing errors:
MyHttpClientClass{
private X getResponseBody(RestClient client, URI uri, HttpMethod method, HttpEntity<T> entity, Class<R> responseType, MyErrorHandler errorHandler) {
try
{ String host = this.getHost();
ResponseEntity<X> resp = client.exchange(uri, method, entity, responseType);
return resp.getBody();
} catch (HttpServerErrorException | HttpClientErrorException e)
{ handleHttpException(e, errorHandler);
throw e;
} catch (Exception e) {
log(e);
throw e; } } }
-----------
Class1 implements Callable<T>
{
#Override public T doCall() throws Exception {
try
{ return this.getRestClient().exchange(this.getUri(),
this.getHttpMethod(), this.getEntity(), getResponseType()).getBody(); } catch (HttpClientErrorException ex) { throw ex; } catch (HttpStatusCodeException ex) { if(this.isNeededRetry(ex)) { throw ex; }else { return generateErrorResponse(ex).getBody(); } } catch (RestClientException ex) { throw ex; } catch (Exception ex) { throw ex; } } }
----------
MySpringApplicationClass{
public X get(String api, String params, Class<R> responseType, String path, List<String> pathVariables, MyErrorHandler errorHandler)
{
return getResponseBody(...);
}}