Latent fingerprints are the fingerprint traces obtained from various surfaces of objects found at the crime scene. Latent fingerprint quality is, therefore, poor and they suffer from non-linear distortions. This is why latent fingerprints contain partial or incomplete minutia information. Developing an automatic fingerprint identification system (AFIS) for latent fingerprints becomes a major challenge because of a small number of minutia features. Moreover, currently developed AFIS for latent fingerprints are not robust against geometric transformations. In this article, based on the existing partial minutiae characteristics, we propose a method for detecting latent fingerprints. To identify an individual with existing nearest neighbor minutia structures, we develop a scale and rotation invariant algorithm called "Ratio of Minutiae Triangles (RMT)". The algorithm utilizes the features which are based on the local minutiae arrangements around a reference minutia. To deal with missing minutiae in latent fingerprints, we consider minutiae clusters based on nearest minutiae neighborhood relation to form hash structures. In the fingerprint retrieval process, these hash structures are used. On the FVC2004 (