Most employees expect a workplace investigation to stay at work. For Salimah Pirbhai, a former Diamond Trust Bank manager, it followed her home, bringing her family into a dispute that ultimately cost her job and raised an unusual question about the limits of an employer’s reach.
Ms Pirbhai’s fight over her dismissal has exposed a rare battle over how far an employer can go into an employee’s private and family life during workplace-related investigations.
She alleged that senior bank officers went beyond formal disciplinary procedures, summoned her brother and used family pressure during an investigation into suspected irregular transactions at the lender’s Parklands branch.
However, the Employment and Labour Relations Court has declined to decide that question, ruling that Ms Pirbhai had used the wrong route of litigation.
It struck out her case, finding that she filed a constitutional petition instead of an ordinary employment claim under the Employment Act.
She sued in January 2026, claiming that her brother's involvement crossed from workplace discipline into her private and family life and breached her constitutional rights, including privacy, dignity, and fair labour practices.
Ms Pirbhai filed the petition seeking declarations that DTB violated her constitutional rights.
She also applied for a declaration that the bank subjected her to workplace harassment, intimidation and unfair labour practices, and unlawfully terminated her employment.
She sought general and aggravated damages, compensation equivalent to 12 months’ gross salary, Sh193,218, which she said had been unlawfully deducted from her terminal dues, unpaid leave days, costs and interest.
The dispute
She was terminated in October 2025. At the time, she was earning Sh649,900 monthly salary.
The legal dispute followed investigations into suspected fraudulent dealings and irregular banking transactions at DTB’s Parklands branch.
DTB told the court that the investigations, suspension, disciplinary proceedings and dismissal were connected to those transactions.
Ms Pirbhai said her problems began after she escalated concerns about suspicious withdrawals from a dead customer’s account.
She alleged that senior executives repeatedly summoned her to informal meetings outside official premises and normal working hours, including meetings at Ole Sereni and Serena hotels, without notice of purpose or procedural safeguards, exposing her to fear, uncertainty, and psychological pressure.
According to her affidavit, she was subjected to intimidation, coercion, threats of arrest and threats to damage her reputation. She also alleged pressure to change her account of events and sign statements favourable to the bank.
Blackmail and threats
The alleged breach, she said, was aggravated “when the executives at the meetings subjected the Petitioner to intimidation, blackmail, and threats of arrest leading to loss of her personal liberty and loss of reputation in an effort to blackmail the Petitioner to concede to the withdrawals.”
Ms Pirbhai told the court that DTB summoned her brother to an off-site meeting on August 15, 2025, allegedly to exert indirect pressure on her.
She said the conduct imported workplace allegations into her family life and caused emotional distress and damage to family relationships.
She argued that this raised an independent constitutional issue because Article 31 protects privacy and the Employment Act does not authorise employers to intrude into family relationships.
“The said conduct caused me severe emotional distress, humiliation, psychological trauma, fear, reputational injury, and profound interference with my dignity, autonomy, and personal relationships,” she said.
DTB disputed that position. It argued that the petition merely repackaged an ordinary employment dispute as a constitutional case. It said that investigations, suspension, disciplinary proceedings and dismissal were governed by the Employment Act.
“All the allegations pleaded by the petitioner, including summons and interrogation of her family members, investigations, questioning by senior officers, meetings, suspension, disciplinary proceedings, alleged intimidation, procedural unfairness and termination of employment, arose directly from and are inseparably connected to the employment relationship and the respondent’s internal disciplinary processes,” its advocate said.
The bank also said allegations of confinement, confiscation of Ms Pirbhai’s mobile phone, intimidation and deprivation of liberty were disputed facts unsupported by contemporaneous documentary, electronic, medical or independent evidence.
Justice Jemimah Keli agreed with the bank on the question of the proper forum for resolving the dispute. The judge found that the grievances, including the alleged privacy violation, were tied to the employment dispute and could be addressed under the statutory employment framework.
“It is apparent to the court that all the grievances have been pleaded and placed under Article 41 of the Constitution,” Justice Keli said in the ruling dated August 20, 2026.
She added: “I find the issue of constitutional avoidance could be ascertained from the pleadings without much inquiry.”
The ruling
The judge held that the Employment Act provided sufficient remedies for the dispute concerning termination.
“As such, this matter ought to have been filed as an ordinary claim as opposed to a Constitutional Petition,” the court said, striking out the petition for offending the doctrine of constitutional avoidance.
The ruling did not determine whether allegations such as intimidation and threats of arrest, pressure to alter her account, off-site meetings outside working hours, and the summoning of her brother to exert pressure on her and intrude into her family life were true.
The court did not also determine whether DTB followed a fair disciplinary process.
In June this year, Ms Pirbhai and two other people were presented at criminal court in Milimani, Nairobi and charged with 68 counts linked to alleged theft, conspiracy, money laundering and forgery involving more than Sh149.3 million. They denied the charges.
The prosecution alleged that funds were fraudulently withdrawn from a Great Britain Pounds account belonging to a bank customer between 2016 and 2020. The criminal allegations remain unproved.
