Json encode not able to fetch special characters from db in php - php

Question

I am learning to write ANDROID API in PHP to fetch data from the server.
The table in the server has a column "name" with value "Jàne" already present.
Below is the sample code:
<?php
$reply= array();
if(isset($_POST['place'])){
// DB connection
$place= $mySQLiconn->real_escape_string($_POST['place']);
$search= $mySQLiconn->query("SELECT name, id FROM info WHERE addr = '$place'");
if(!empty($search)){
if($search->num_rows > 0) {
$reply["list"]= array();
while($search = $search->fetch_array()){
$row = array();
$row["id"] = $search["id"];
$row["name"] = $search["name"];
array_push($reply["list"], $row);
}
echo json_encode($reply);
} else{
//
$reply["msg"] = "Error";
echo json_encode($reply);
}
} else{
//Fetched failed
$reply["msg"] = "Error";
echo json_encode($reply);
}
$mySQLiconn->close();
} else {
$reply["msg"] = "Error";
echo json_encode($reply); // point L
}
?>
If the result from the search result contains any special character, I get a 200 reply with a BLANK response body.
If the search result contains only A-Z, a-z, 0-9, comma, space ; then its working, I get a proper response body.
Please help me how to fetch the data with special character also.
EDIT
I want the same exact data in my response also, so that I can show it in the app UI.
There are other special characters also in the table like é , è , à, etc
Select command is working properly in my cpanel for special character also
So, I think its not a database issue.
UPDATE:
The current code returns blank, but if i replace point L with echo var_dump($reply);
I get the response in following format:
array(1) {
["list"]=> array(3) {
[0]=> array(2) {
["id"]=> string(2) "31"
["name"]=> string(4) "Maze"
}
[1]=> array(2) {
["id"]=> string(2) "35"
["name"]=> string(4) "Jan�"
}
[2]=> array(2) {
["id"]=> string(2) "39"
["name"]=> string(7) "Puchong"
}
}
}