Gitlab runner: Not able to contact running webserv

Question

I intend to use the Gitlab CI for testing my Django APIs. I'm facing an issue with contacting the webserver that is being brought up in the before_script part. For this, find my .gitlab-ci.yml file config below:

image: <xyz>
services:
  - mongo:3.2
before_script:
  - pip install -r $CI_PROJECT_DIR/requirements.txt
  - cd $CI_PROJECT_DIR/ && nohup python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000 &
  - ps -ef | grep python

test:
  script:
  - curl -k http://0.0.0.0:8000

The webserver is getting created properly.

$ ps -ef | grep python
root       1119      6  0 11:43 ?        00:00:00 grep python
root       1120   1117  0 11:43 ?        00:00:00 python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

But here, I am not able to contact my webserver. I had even tried curl on xyz:8000 as well as http://localhost:8000 but none of them worked.

The output of the curl command is as follows:

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed

  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:--     0

I cannot use network host mode as I'm linking services [mongo] to my runner.

Any help/leads, please?