Hyderabad, March 13 :     They are young, enthusiastic, and charge only Rs 50 to kill. School or college students, they take special pride as contract killers most in dem- and in Prakasham district of Andhra Pradesh. They approach their victims easily. ?Hello uncle, hello auntie,? a group of youth had called out to Subba and Sundari Rao, residents of Macherla district. The youth had been given a contract to murder the elderly couple two months ago. This they did. But also took the ornaments which finally gave the crime away. Together, the teenage gangs commit around 200 contract killings a year. In 1997 alone, there had been 210 such murders. They employ various techniques. ?In one incident, the killers watched their victims die slowly in the presence of a large crowd,? says Prabhakar Rao, a sub-inspector in Ongole town, the crime centre of Prakasham. Young people are sought out because they kill for the price of a chicken. Fifty rupees was the amount four youth got for killing Mastan, a tailor in Ongole recently. The gang which killed the Raos was paid Rs 1.5 lakh ? but that was an exception. The gangs abound in Ongole. ?One hundred and seventy four hoodlums have been identified in Ongole alone, with another 50 in Markapur,? a sub inspector in Ongole said. The district police have identified six main gangs engaged in the contract killings. Factionalism among political groups and the setting up of many borstals near Ongole, Baptala and Macherla are responsible for the rise in the contract killings, police said. Most of the killings are offshoots of rivalry over ?girlfriends? or ?land?. The students, once out of campus, are used by political leaders to their advantage. They are being exploited for crime, Prabhakar Rao says. The era of hired assassins began in 1985 when two killers were invited by landlords to Ongole to kill some boys who had misbehaved with their daughters. Supported by the gentry, the killers settled down in the town. The gangs were used by all political parties, including the ruling Telugu Desam and the Left. The murder of K. Venkataramana of Vijayawada, who launched the Janachaitanya Vedika movement against arrack and illiteracy, marked the beginning of contract killings. Hired assassins also killed prominent Vijayawada legislator and leader of Kapu community V. Ranga Rao while he was sitting in dharna with his followers. The killers came in a city bus in the early hours and hacked all eight persons to pieces. On March 20, 1997, a gang went around brandishing the severed head of a rival gang leader, Wahab. The killers have not fared too well, either. Nearly 250 of them have been killed in the past 10 years.