Soft keyboard not present, cannot hide keyboard - Appium android

I am getting following exception:

 org.openqa.selenium.WebDriverException: An unknown server-side error occurred while processing the command. (Original error: Soft keyboard not present, cannot hide keyboard) (WARNING: The server did not provide any stacktrace information)
    Command duration or timeout: 368 milliseconds

I am using driver.hideKeyboard() to hide soft input keyboard that is open on the screen.
How to ensure that keyboard is open before hiding it? OR any other workaround?