This code snippet worked for me. You have to provide the realm which you can get by looking at the 401 response header you get from the host.
val credsProvider = new BasicCredentialsProvider();
credsProvider.setCredentials(AuthScope.ANY,
new UsernamePasswordCredentials(user, password));
val authCache = new BasicAuthCache();
val digestScheme = new DigestScheme();
digestScheme.overrideParamter("realm", "**Name of the Realm**");
// Nonce value
digestScheme.overrideParamter("nonce", "whatever");
authCache.put(targetHost, digestScheme);
context.setCredentialsProvider(credsProvider);
context.setAuthCache(authCache);
val httpget = new HttpGet(url);
val response = httpClient.execute(targetHost, httpget, context);