Naked and bound in what appeared to have been a warehouse in Fordsburg, Faizal Lorget was beaten to a pulp, scalded with hot water and burnt with charcoal and cigarettes. As he screamed in pain, his assailants laughed at him and continued with the torture.

Despite the kind of injuries he suffered, the family of two of his attackers, believed to be brothers, approached his family three days after the attack requesting that he not open a case against them but rather settle out of court.

'They must rot in jail. They offered us money; what is money'

The Lorget family are, however, having none of it and have taken the matter to the police. "They must rot in jail. They offered us money; what is money? When they were here, I asked Faizal to take off his clothes so that they see his injuries, and they were shocked. The sister of the boys who beat him up even cried," Lorget's uncle Essop said.

Lorget believes he was at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was at Emperors Palace in Kempton Park last week Saturday when a man approached him and asked if he knew a woman called Nazli. Lorget said no, but the man said he was lying and also asked him whether he drives a blue Sentra.

"I told him that I do not and that I don't even drive," he said.

They kept talking, with the other man confessing that Nazli was cheating on him. Still talking, Lorget and the man then walked to the parking lot where the latter had parked his car. When they got there, two other men were there and one of them pointed a gun at Lorget.

He was bundled into the back of a van, blindfolded, had a gun shoved into his mouth and was assaulted until he lost consciousness. His attackers then drove to Fordsburg, where he was undressed, bound and came under further attack.

According to Lorget, the men said they had seen him in video footage leaving Nazli's house. Dazed, shocked and in excruciating pain, Lorget pleaded with them to stop, telling that he did not know anyone called Nazli. But they continued with the torture.

Naked, bleeding and lying on the cold floor the following day, he overheard one of his attackers talking with the other saying they had the wrong person. They apologised, took him to a hotel in Fordsburg, told him to clean up, went to a chemist and got him medicine to treat his wounds. He was then dropped at home and given R1 000 to buy spectacles because his old ones were broken during the attack.

Constable Moses Ratsatsi of Kempton Park police station confirmed that cases of assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm and kidnapping had been laid but that no one had been arrested.