In the first of its kind case in Wales, UK, the police nabbed a drug dealer by tracing him through his fingerprints obtained from a photo on WhatsApp. The photo showed part of the drug dealer's hand holding a small bag of ecstasy pills.

Police officers investigating the case, discovered the photo on the mobile phone of the drug dealer's client, according to a BBC report as quoted in NDTV. The image obtained was sent to South Wales Police's scientific support unit which uploaded it to their images database. But since only parts of two of the fingers were visible in the photo, the police officers were unable to find a match with other fingerprint records in the national databases.

With the help of other evidence, police linked the photograph to a suspect and matched the fragments of the fingerprints in the photo to the full fingerprint of the suspect after arresting him.

"While the scale and quality of the photograph proved a challenge, the small bits were enough to prove that he was the dealer. It has now opened the floodgates and when there is part of a hand on a photograph, officers are sending them in," Dave Thomas from South Wales Police's scientific support unit said.

Soon after the breakthrough, the news of the arrest had Twitter buzzing with people praising the efforts of the police. 'Fit for a detective story! How blown up fingerprints in WhatsApp images are used to arrest a convict, you can't estimate the power of social media,' wrote one person on Twitter.

While another person warned people against taking high resolution images and post it on social media. 'Pro-tip: don't take high-res pictures of your fingers (and fingerprints) holding illegal drugs and then share them with your family and friends. The cops will be very happy to use those against you,' he tweeted.