automatically remove comments in python code

I have this code to remove commnents in python code. using regex pattern, especially for multilines. I try to test it on some string but not comments, it seems failing on specific cases.

import re, sys

def removeComments(text):
    """ remove comments.
        text: blob of text with comments (can include newlines)
        returns: text with comments removed
    """
    pattern = r"""
                            ##  --------- COMMENT ---------
           #.*?$           ##  Start of # .... comment
         |                  ##
           '''              ##  Start of ''' ... ''' comment
           [^*]*\*+         ##  Non-* followed by 1-or-more *'s
           (                ##
             [^/*][^*]*\*+  ##
           )*               ##  0-or-more things which don't start with /
                            ##    but do end with '*'
           /                ##  End of /* ... */ comment
         |                  ##  -OR-  various things which aren't comments:
           (                ##
                            ##  ------ " ... " STRING ------
             "              ##  Start of " ... " string
             (              ##
               \\.          ##  Escaped char
             |              ##  -OR-
               [^"\\]       ##  Non "\ characters
             )*             ##
             "              ##  End of " ... " string
           |                ##  -OR-
                            ##
                            ##  ------ ' ... ' STRING ------
             '              ##  Start of ' ... ' string
             (              ##
               \\.          ##  Escaped char
             |              ##  -OR-
               [^'\\]       ##  Non '\ characters
             )*             ##
             '              ##  End of ' ... ' string
           |                ##  -OR-
                            ##
                            ##  ------ ANYTHING ELSE -------
             .              ##  Anything other char
             [^/"'\\]*      ##  Chars which doesn't start a comment, string
           )                ##    or escape
    """
    regex = re.compile(pattern, re.VERBOSE|re.MULTILINE|re.DOTALL)
    noncomments = [m.group(2) for m in regex.finditer(text) if m.group(2)]

    return "".join(noncomments)



def commentRemover(text):
    def replacer(match):
        s = match.group(0)
        if s.startswith('/'):
            return " " # note: a space and not an empty string
        else:
            return s
    pattern = re.compile(
        r'//.*?$|/\*.*?\*/|\'(?:\\.|[^\\\'])*\'|"(?:\\.|[^\\"])*"',
        re.DOTALL | re.MULTILINE
    )
    return re.sub(pattern, replacer, text)



filename = 'test.py'
with open(filename) as f:
    # uncmtFile = removeComments(f.read())
    uncmtFile = commentRemover(f.read())
    print uncmtFile

But; it fails to recognize string with comments:

createTableStatements = (
  '''create table a1 (
       c1 varchar(128) primary key,
       c2 varchar(128),
       c3 integer
     )''',

)
    variable5 = {"a": \
                      """This text is not a comment
 t"""}

Is there a way to catch those special cases in regex ? Or is it better to parse with a state variable ?