The incident took place after a local allegedly stumbled across at least three men gang raping two girls aged 14 and 18 in the Ivory Park settlement of Lindokuhle on Saturday night.

The passer-by called other community members for back up and a group raced to the scene to rescue to victims, Gauteng Police Colonel Lungelo Dlamini told News24.

The vigilantes collared the trio before two of the men managed to break free and escape.

A third man could not outrun the mob and was badly beaten before having his testicles ripped off, resulting in his death, Col Dlamini said.

He said the teens told investigators they were walking home on Saturday night when they were kidnapped by armed assailants.

“Allegations are that two girls who were walking to Lindokuhle informal settlement were confronted by suspects armed with a knife and a firearm,” Col Dlamini said.

“The suspects then raped them repeatedly.”

The teens’ ordeal is the latest in a spate of sexual attacks on young girls.

Last week four girls aged between 13 and 17 were attacked by a group of males in Ratanda township near Heidelberg.

According to police, the girls were walking home from an event described as a “night vigil” when they were set upon by “three unknown men with knives who raped all of them”.

Earlier this month, a young man escorting schoolgirls from Orange Farm, a township 45km outside Johannesburg, was stabbed to death while trying to protect them from a group of boys harassing them.

Figures released in April ranked three South African cities in the top 50 most dangerous places on earth.

Cape Town came 11th with a murder rate of 66.4 per 100,000 people, followed by Nelson Mandela Bay at 39.2 murders per 100,000 and Durban with a rate of 38.5.

But it is sexual violence that has seen the greatest increase, with a surge in rapes sparking waves of national protest and a rise in vigilante attacks by communities pushed to the brink.

Gauteng Province is considered Last year the ANC Women’s League (ANCWL) marched through Cape Town to lobby parliament to introduce laws allowing the chemical castration of convicted rapists.

“We have tried out best, we have tried to raise awareness,” ANCWL secretary-general Meokgo Matuba said at a mass demonstration following the brutal rape of a seven-year-old girl at a restaurant in Pretoria last October.

“We have tried to call for harsher sentences but in this instance, there’s nothing that seems to lower (the incidence of rape), hence we are calling for chemical castration.

“It is getting worse every day.”