Solidity Development – Resolving Invalid Opcode ‘0x1c’ During Smart Contract Execution

I have written a smart contract to test event from java project using web3j
I have prepared the web3j wrapper java class using solc compiler version
"0.5.7+commit.6da8b019.Linux.g++"

I am using a private ethereum network to deploy the smart contract and execute method in smart contract.

The smart contract source is

pragma solidity ^0.5.7;

contract TestEvent {

    // Test Event will be received by java application
    event testEvent(string indexed message);


    function emitTestEvent(
        string  calldata message
    ) 
    external
    {
     emit testEvent(message);
    }
}

Java code to execute the method is

// Load broken smart contract build by solc version 0.5.7
        TestEvent contract = TestEvent.load("0x673ccae08d3c3f50f111fb9e5870c76bbbf60938",
                web3, credentials,
                GAS_PRICE, GAS_LIMIT);  // contract instance
        if (contract != null){
            TransactionReceipt transactionReceipt = contract.emitTestEvent("Message").send();
            System.out.println(transactionReceipt.toString());
        }

When executing the emitTestEvent method geth log output shows an error

"err="invalid opcode 0x1c"

What is the problem with my source code?