Dropped charges, police overreach: How the ‘Indigo 11’ case fell apart

A large-scale investigation into the Indigo bookstore vandalism, involving more than 70 police officers and 10 nighttime raids, is unlikely to achieve a single criminal conviction.

Sixteen months after her arrest in a nighttime raid on her home, Toronto school teacher Suzanne Narain sat in a packed courtroom, anxiously waiting for a judge to hand down her fate.

Charges against Narain and two others were withdrawn on Thursday in a courtroom bursting with supporters, at what was expected to be the conclusion of the cases against 11 activists accused in the vandalism of a downtown Indigo bookstore in November 2023.

And although Judge Vincenzo Rondinelli reserved his judgment for two of the group who pleaded guilty Thursday, it seems likely that this large-scale investigation involving more than 70 police officers and 10 nighttime raids will not achieve a single registered criminal conviction.

“We’re saying it’s a victory for us,” Narain tells Global News in an exclusive interview.

“They invaded our homes, destroyed our lives and spent millions of dollars to do this. And there hasn’t been one conviction. Just to silence organizers speaking out against Palestine. And none of us are silent,” Narain says.

Supporters flooded the courtroom Thursday, many of them wearing keffiyehs, a symbol of Palestinian culture and resistance, in support of a group of professors, teachers and activists who have become collectively known as “the Indigo 11.”

The group faced charges of mischief, conspiracy and criminal harassment in relation to the Nov. 10, 2023, vandalism of an Indigo bookstore in downtown Toronto, in which red paint was splashed across the storefront and posters of Jewish CEO Heather Reisman’s face, above the caption “funding genocide,” were glued to the windows, weeks into the Israel-Hamas conflict.

Reisman’s HESEG Foundation provides tuition to former lone soldiers who serve in the Israel Defense Forces.