Back in the days when she was a hardworking schoolgirl with a bright future, Jasveen Sangha had a few words of advice for her fellow pupils at Calabasas High School.
‘It isn’t what they say about you, it’s what they whisper,’ the British-born teenager wrote in the Californian school’s 2001 yearbook, quoting Hollywood actor Errol Flynn.
She added another cheesy line, this time taken from Italian director Luciano De Crescezno: ‘We are each of us angels with only one wing. We can only fly by embracing one another.’
Who could believe that the rather plain, teenager, smiling demurely alongside her fellow pupils more than two decades ago, would grow up to be Los Angeles‘ so-called Ketamine Queen, the 41-year-old alleged to have supplied Friends star Matthew Perry with the lethal drug dose which killed him in October last year?
Sangha is one of five people charged with involvement in 54-year-old Perry’s ketamine death, including his personal assistant and two doctors. She was charged on August 15 with conspiracy to distribute ketamine, maintaining a drug-involved premises, possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine, possession with intent to distribute ketamine, and five counts of distribution of ketamine.
If found guilty, she could face life in prison. How on earth did a doctor’s daughter born into a respectable British Sikh family from Loughton in Essex get caught up in the sordid death of one of the most famous TV actors in the world and allegedly become part of a ‘broad criminal network’ supplying drugs to celebrities – a network, many fear, she could now expose?
British-born Jasveen Sangha is one of five people charged with involvement in 54-year-old Matthew Perry’s ketamine death
Her transformation from student to a woman with a moneyed lifestyle, whose appearance has been altered by blonde hair dye, blue contact lenses and, say associates, the rhinoplasty beloved by so many Californian women, is documented in her social media posts.
Many of the photographs on her Instagram account also feature her 66-year-old thrice-married British mother, Nilem, who used to run KFC restaurant franchises in California before being taken to court by the fast food giant around a decade ago.
Jasveen’s flamboyant uncle, Paul Singh, 64, a former associate of the late British nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow, is also frequently photographed alongside his niece at Los Angeles clubs.
There is no suggestion that either relative is involved in any of the crimes with which Sangha has been charged.
This week, an investigation by the Mail has uncovered Sangha’s past in both the UK and the US.
Her North Hollywood home, according to prosecutors in court last week, was even known as the ‘Sangha Stash House’ and used to ‘store, package and distribute narcotics’. More, in a moment, of the precise accusations made in court against Sangha in relation to Perry’s death in the hot tub at his home in Pacific Palisades.
She pleaded not guilty to the charges against her last week but a judge refused bail, calling her a ‘flight risk’.
All in all, a jaw-dropping turn of events for a woman born in Essex in July 1983.
Jasveen’s mother, Nilem, also born in Ilford, was the daughter of a hosiery wholesaler who set up a fashion company with London showrooms. Her first marriage, aged 24, in 1982 to a medical doctor was short-lived but produced Jasveen.
By 1986 she had married again and changed her daughter’s name to that of her second husband, Dr Ajmel Sangha.
The family, along with Jasveen’s maternal grandparents, moved to California and set up home in Tujunga in north-western LA.
Jasveen’s mother Nilem divorced and remarried again.
Jasveen was sent to school in nearby Calabasas, one of LA’s wealthiest neighbourhoods, an area made famous by the Kardashians on reality TV. This, then, was the glitzy world into which Jasveen Sangha stepped as an impressionable young girl.
Who could believe that the rather plain teenager would grow up to be Los Angeles’ so-called Ketamine Queen
She was a member of a state-wide academic organisation called CSF, The California Scholarship Federation, which encourages academic achievement and community service among students.
No one was surprised when she won a place at UC Irvine, one of the US’s top public universities.
At home, life was rather more tumultuous for Sangha’s family.
With her third husband, Ashok Sahadevan, Sangha’s mother Nilem ran a group of KFC fast food franchises in California via a company called Tasty Birds Management. They were sued by both employees and the takeaway chain over failure to pay wages and royalties for the use of the KFC logo.
California’s Department of Industrial Relations issued a decision in December 2010 demanding the couple pay $12,000 to the employees.
In 2013, a judge ordered the couple to pay KFC $52,526.65, an amount which by 2015 had swelled to $62,877.
Nilem’s husband declared bankruptcy before the case was over, leaving Nilem to shoulder the entire sum. It is unclear whether she has ever paid the amount owed but the family’s four-bed $1,250,000 home is up for sale.
Against the backdrop of this strife, Jasveen returned to the UK in 2010 on her British passport and studied for an MBA at London’s Hult Business School.
Old friends says she was a changed woman when she returned to LA.
She looked ‘completely different than when she was in high school,’ a former associate told the New York Post this week.
‘It looked like she got a nose job and maybe other things done to her face.’
Back in LA, Jasveen tried to launch her own business, setting up a nail salon called the Stiletto Nail Bar. The business was a flop and she and her business partner were sued for non payment of rent two years after opening.
It was around this time, say contemporaries, that Sangha’s life appeared to diverge from theirs.
Matthew Perry in 2023 out shopping for clothes
While many of them were settling down, she was ‘partying a lot and being excessive on the weekends’.
For a while she had a serious boyfriend, but the breakdown of their relationship in around 2014 signalled a change in her character. A male friend who spoke to the New York Post this week attributed her move into the party world to her loneliness.
Was Sangha’s head turned by the wealthy crowd she rubbed shoulders with?
She dyed her hair blonde, began wearing heavy make-up and started dressing in designer clothes. She developed a penchant for flashy Van Cleef & Arpels jewellery and clothes by Versace, Louis Vuitton and Chanel.
She also remodelled herself as a party planner for the rich and famous, using the name ‘Jazzy Productions’ and began making appearances at Golden Globe and Oscar events.
‘She developed a lot of connections and hung with a clan of girls,’ the friend said.
Among them was Perla Hudson, who until 2018 was married to Guns N’ Roses guitarist, Slash.
Photos show Sangha and Hudson standing next to a private jet and at an event at Sotheby’s in Beverly Hills. She was also photographed, with her mother and uncle, alongside actor Charlie Sheen, who has been in and out of drug rehab for years.
The image appeared on her uncle Paul’s Instagram with the caption: ‘It’s always a family affair when we do it’.
The friend who spoke to the New York Post this week said Sangha would host parties at her North Hollywood apartment. ‘I’ve never been to a party at Jasveen’s where drugs were out of the ordinary. She had access to drugs and it started to look like a viable option. She could get liquid ketamine.’
Sangha’s life certainly appears to have been in stark contrast to that of her former stepfather, Dr Ajmel Sangha, who gave her his surname as a child.
As a Chief Medical Officer for California Correctional Health Care Services, Dr Sangha devotes his time to getting prisoners off drugs and reducing deaths. In the past, he has had the heart-breaking task of notifying family members that their loved ones had died in prison from overdoses.
‘I used to think, what a waste, what a waste of life,’ he said in an interview with an in-house CCHCS magazine.
Under his watch, overdose hospitalisations at the prison decreased by 50 per cent. He said much of his success came from important conversations.
‘Are you listening to the patients. Are you treating them with the dignity and respect they deserve, that everybody deserves?’
When the Mail spoke to Dr Sangha this week he simply said: ‘She is not my daughter.’
US website TMZ claims Sangha met Matthew Perry, who had struggled with drug addiction for decades, in rehab. Later she referred to him as ‘Chandler’, the name of his Friends character.
Just two weeks after Perry’s death in October last year, she was enjoying lychee martinis at the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Tokyo where suites cost £1,500 a night.
In February she and her mother travelled to London together. The family is believed still to own property in Loughton.
Back in LA, Sangha was arrested in March on drugs charges after federal agents found a stash of thousands of pills, three pounds of meth, mushrooms, cocaine and vials of ketamine at her home.
On that occasion, her mother put up $100,000 bail money.
Sangha seemed unperturbed by the charges. Just hours before she was re-arrested on August 15 by LA police in connection with Perry’s death, she was showing off a new hair cut on social media.
She is also implicated in the ketamine death of another victim, Cody McLaury in 2019.
She has pleaded not guilty to the charges against her but her bail has been revoked and she is currently behind bars.
‘Hollywood celebrities should be quaking in their boots,’ said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani this week, after warning that Sangha may well try to strike a deal and get a lighter sentence by handing over the names of some of her celebrity clients.
‘Anyone who has anything to do with Jasveen Sangha should be really concerned right now.’
Legal sources believe she may hold the key to exposing who is dealing and buying in Hollywood, if she takes a plea deal.
Mr Rahmani added: ‘There is overwhelming evidence against her. She’s in a world of hurt right now.’
While this saga is far from over, what an extraordinary state of affairs for a woman born in a small Essex town whose family moved to the US in search of a better life.