The following code works for me.
//escape the double quotes in json string
String payload="{\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"method\":\"changeDetail\",\"params\":[{\"id\":11376}],\"id\":2}";
String requestUrl="https://git.eclipse.org/r/gerrit/rpc/ChangeDetailService";
sendPostRequest(requestUrl, payload);
method implementation:
public static String sendPostRequest(String requestUrl, String payload) {
    try {
        URL url = new URL(requestUrl);
        HttpURLConnection connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
        connection.setDoInput(true);
        connection.setDoOutput(true);
        connection.setRequestMethod("POST");
        connection.setRequestProperty("Accept", "application/json");
        connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", "application/json; charset=UTF-8");
        OutputStreamWriter writer = new OutputStreamWriter(connection.getOutputStream(), "UTF-8");
        writer.write(payload);
        writer.close();
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(connection.getInputStream()));
        StringBuffer jsonString = new StringBuffer();
        String line;
        while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
                jsonString.append(line);
        }
        br.close();
        connection.disconnect();
        return jsonString.toString();
    } catch (Exception e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e.getMessage());
    }
}