In a startling reversal in a case that raised questions about misconduct in the Brooklyn district attorney’s office, defense lawyers for two of the four men from Crown Heights, indicted last year on charges of raping and forcibly prostituting a neighborhood woman for nearly a decade, said that prosecutors notified them on Wednesday that they were planning to drop all charges in the case.

The district attorney’s office declined to comment, but two former members of the office with close ties to people who still work there said the indictment could be dismissed as early as Tuesday, when a hearing in the case is scheduled.

The charges, brought against the men last June, created an initial shock not only because the victim complained of being attacked beginning at age 13, but also because she was a member of the Chabad Lubavitch community of Orthodox Jews and the accused were older black men in the same neighborhood, where those two groups coexist, but rarely interact.

Announced with great fanfare at a news conference by Charles J. Hynes, the district attorney, the case was immediately questioned by friends and relatives of the defendants: Damien Crooks, Darrell Dula and two brothers, Jawara and Jamali Brockett.