A GOUROCK drug smuggler who fathered a child whilst locked up in a Caribbean prison has been freed, the Telegraph can reveal.

Paul Cairns, 32, served eight years of a decade-long sentence for his part in a £450,000 cocaine trafficking operation.

But he won't immediately return to Inverclyde because he must remain in the Dominican Republic until 2021 as a condition of his early release.

Cairns was caught at the country's Punta Cana airport with nine kilos of high purity cocaine, concealed within coffee cans, in 2009.

Now living with his fiancée, Carmen Sanchez, and their six-year-old daughter on the island, he has taken to social media under name 'Paul James' to proclaim his 'freedom'.

A source said: "Cairns and Miss Sanchez have been together since 2011 and they got engaged before Christmas.

"She has on her Facebook page, 'engaged to Paul James', which is the name he goes by on social media.

"He has been freed on parole but he has to stay on the island until his ten-year term is up."

Cairns' accomplice, Daniel Squires, 30, of Greenock — who is understood to have fathered a child around a year ago — currently remains in prison in the Dominican Republic.

Authorities there allow conjugal visits and also permit prisoners to have mobile phones with internet access as long as they pay for the devices.

Our source said: "Both Cairns and Squires are wanting to go home to Scotland once their sentences are up.

"Cairns wants to be reunited with his family."

"People can scarcely believe that these two drug smugglers have both managed to get women pregnant when they are meant to be being punished for their crimes."

The Telegraph told in January 2016 how Cairns had boasted on social media about the lax prison regime and his cushy cell life.

In 2013 he posted a picture of himself with the baby daughter he fathered whilst inside.

Cairns' mum, Dawn Emonson, appealed in 2010 for her son to be allowed to service his sentence in the UK.

She said previously: "It started as being charged with trafficking 30 packs of cocaine, then went to 18, then 14 between them.

"The fiscal in the court also brought in a blue and red suitcase on the day when initially the charge said they had black ones.

"If these kind of things happened back home, the trial would have been thrown out."