A woman is in a grocery store, going about her business.

A group of four men stand behind her, staring in her direction. One of them says, "We're four and there's only one." Another says, "So, who will take the shot?"

The woman turns, visibly scared.

But worry not, this is not an everyday scene from India, where the woman is harmed by a group of men. It's an advertisement for a deodorant called Shot, and it's just one in a series of ads that makes similar "jokes" before revealing that the men are discussing a deodorant, not a woman.

Unsurprisingly, the ads were widely panned on social media yesterday.

It led to the I&B ministry taking notice and asking for the ads to be suspended while an inquiry was conducted. The ministry found the ads to violate sections of the new IT rules and wrote to Twitter and YouTube to take them down.

"The above mentioned ad is detrimental to the portrayal of women in the interest of decency or morality, and in violation of the rule 3(1)(b)(ii) of the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, which inter-alia provides that the users shall not host, display, upload, publish, transmit, store, update or share any information which is insulting or harassing on the basis of gender," the email said.

The National Commission for Women also took cognisance of the ads, saying they "blatantly promote the rape mentality in the country" and that it had flagged the content with the Delhi police. The Delhi Commission of Women also wrote to I&B minister Anurag Thakur, saying the ad "promoted gangrape culture".

The Advertising Standards Council of India said it had intervened along with the government to "stop the further publishing of the offending advertisement".

Meanwhile, the company behind the deodorant has made its Twitter profile private.